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'ebb, Esq., of Louisville, Ky, 

the St. Louis Guardian says of i jIs 
distinguished and highly respected gentleman : 

There are Catholic laymen whose reputation is na- 
tional, though they have never coveted honors or trod 
the political field. Prominent among these is Mr. 
Webb, personally so well known to many of our 
readers. He wields a strong pen, often and effectually 
employed in behalf of his Church, and his letters of a 
Kentucky Catholic will make his name revered long 
after he himself has mouldered into dust. The purity 
of his private life, his social qualities of mind, of heart, 
the illustration of his Catholic education, enhance the 
Ct^'AS;'''"'"*'^' f''*'"'.*^-'«r''/i»/«f'BH?".a]dAnd bitter 

^ ™3rr P-^ ^l^^^oni-l JO semBU eq;\qLoS 
Sif P ^-^suqo JO pTO poo JO iBinapem ejB 

SJolf P^^-'^Is uoos ^i ieon^,^ o^ penguoo ^ou 

AooSnl'- ^^"'"'^ J° "°^ P^utB^s-pooiq 9qi pa« 

?„S1; '^^W'^OP ^saqx -sjaqdosonqd papoos aq^ poB 
^WAJO sanu^Dop snojdmi aqlui pa;"onpa 'pamao, 
paurej^ SBM sn papaoaad qoiqM uoi^BjauaS aq t -Suiaq 
«aoui s;; saAiaoai ^i osjb os 'Suipaoarf auo aq^ uio« 

-BJauaS /oaAa sb :>Bq; osi^ aAaasqo •e^BisodV aui ut 

aginosaad s.m qo;qM ;Bq; sb am^s aq; li pjaol a? jj 

ao!;aod aa^^aaS aq^ ni ^uasaad ^b simaid qo.qM ^"itds 

a^.\*«f r^ '"^-'I^^ ^'l pai^anSuBui ^^q^ jd^omied 

fsfSrl' ^^'IJ' •'^l"'^"'^-' m^ noi .-..qVamos i? 
)S ?snm aAi ^sanba.x ^s^g ano^ q^iAi ifdraoD oj,--ssal ^ 

Ul Sr!mic!.^"'"'i-'^^ ^"1 "^1^ ''^ ^"0 ^«P<1 'qduinu^ 






Mr\ — •n'Bf>^^ 



THE CATHOLIC QUESTION IN POLITICS! 



i 



COMPBISINa 



A SEEIES OF LETTEES 



ADDSESSED TO 



GEORGE D. PRENTICE, Esq., 

(of the loxjisvillb journal.) 



BY 



A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 



/3. i/W^<f^. 



LOUISVILLE, KT.: 

WEBB, GILL & LEVERING. 

1856. 



s>^ 






Entered according to an Act of Congress, in the year 1856, 

By WEBB, GILL & LEVERING. 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Kentucky. 






A. F. COX, 
Stereotyper and Printer, 

LOUISVILLE, KY. 



PREFATORY REMARKS 



ATDRESSEO TO 



MY PROTESTANT COUNTRYMEN. 



In compliance with tlie expressed wishes of many valued 
j)ersonal friends, I here present to the public, in a connected 
form, the series of Letters to George D. Prentice, Esq., 
which originally appeared in the columns of the Louisville 
Daily Courier. In doing so, it appears but reasonable that I 
should introduce them with some explanatory observations, 
indicating the motives which induced their publication, and 
proposing for the consideration of my Protestant fellow- 
citizens, some other matters connected with the subjects 
therein treated, and not fully commented on in the Letters 
themselves. 

For the first time, since the formation of our government, 
a party has appeared in the land, which adopts, openly and 
deliberately, the policy of proscription on account of religious 
faith. Proscription, in any sense, has no affinity with repub- 
licanism. From its very nature, it seeks the advancement of 
one portion of the people through the degradation of another. 
But when political proscription is based on the idea that the 
religious convictions of men are just cause for its exercise 
against them, those who adopt the principle, are guilty, not 
only of warring against the very genius of republicanism, 
but also of usurping the prerogative of the Deity, and 



6 PREFATORY REMABK8. 

claiming the riglit to judge and condemn, in the face of the 
inspired Word of God, which says ** judge not/' for ** ven- 
geance is mine.'' 

From the beginning of the controversy, which necessarily 
grew out of the recognition of so strange a doctrine in repub- 
lican party politics by a very considerable minority of the 
American people, the Catholics have acted entirely on the 
defensive. They have been attacked, as they conceive, with- 
out any shadow of cause, and on a point wherein all men 
are peculiarly sensitive. Further, these assaults frequently 
came from quarters, whence Catholics had no right to expect 
any other than fair and generous treatment. This was par- 
ticularly the case with reference to the Editor of the Louisville 
Journal. Many of them had been, for years, his warm 
personal and political friends, and the editor could show no 
cause for doubting either their honesty or their patriotism. 
But, even in the hypothesis that he was honest in his conviction 
of danger to the republic on account of the peculiar religious 
views of the Roman Catholics, still I hold that the pre- 
vious good understanding between Mr. Prentice and a 
large number of those holding the faith deemed by him 
80 dangerous, should have induced him to treat them with, 
at least, some degree of courtesy. But, instead of this, the 
most rabid sectarian sheet has been mild and gentle, when 
compared with the Louisville Journal. From the position 
of an open and consistent friend, he jumps, at a single 
bound, to the attitude of an avowed and implacable enemy, 
and out-Heroding Herod, he produces a paper, surpassing, 
in uncharitable invective and naked abusiveness, the vilest of 
his thoroughly vile Popery -hating cotemporaries. Formerly, 
a votary of the gentlest of all the muses, he has tuned his 
pipes to another lay. *'Arma, virumque cano:'* — war is 
now his theme ; and the object of his highest ambition 
is to break a lance with the ** Papal Dragon." I cannot say 
whether Mr. Prentice's valor was whetted, in view of the 
issue he contemplated, by reflecting on the motives which 
influenced the old Catholic St. George to undertake the over- 



PREFATORY REMAKES. 7 

throw of tli8 famous dragon of England, or whether he drew 
his inspiration from thinking of the mighty deeds of a later 
anti-Catholic saint of the same country, generally known as 
saint Lord George G-ordon. I am inclined to think, however, 
from certain incidents which lately occurred in Louisville, in 
which Mr, Prentice's friends took some part, and which were 
somewhat analogous to the doughty doings of Lord George 
Gordon's forces in London, that the old Catholic St George 
is not the editor' b patron ssLint, Besides, the ** Papist" St. 
George killed his monster, and skinned him, too, for aught 
I know, while the monster combated by saint George Gordon, 
like that for which Mr. Prentice has been sharpening his 
spear, turned out, as this one will, a mere fiction of a disor- 
dered fancy. There was one element in the character of the 
old Catholic St. George, through which he was enabled to 
make clean work of the British Dragon ; but this element is 
wanting in the character of Mr. Prentice : he is no saint 
George. It were well, indeed, for the editor to study out the 
real meaning of this beautiful Christian allegory. Let him. 
first overcome the hydra-headed mcnsters of fanaticism, and 
hatred, and uncharitableness, which have their habitation in 
his own heart, and he may then plead some justification for 
going about, like another Quixote, hunting after monsters 
much less repulsive and much less dangerous than those 
which he may see at any time by casting his eyes inward. 

But is Mr. Prentice so thoroughly fanatical, as to believe 
even a moiety of the charges he has brought against the Catho- 
lic Church? For myself, I cannot help thinking, that the 
monster he is combating is a mere figure of pasteboard and 
buckram, fashioned by himself, and painted in most diabolical 
colors, which he sets up for the double purpose of frightening 
Know-Nothing babydom out of its seven wits, ancj of show- 
ing these fear-stricken innocents and simpleton?, that they 
have nothing to apprehend while he is about. Let them but 
attend to the supplies, and he will carry on the war. 

For a considerable time, before and after the last August 
election, it was ph'^inly perceptible, that there existed ii^ th§ 



5 PREFATORY REMARKS. 

minds of a large portion of the citizens of Louisville an 
intense bitterness of feeling against their Catholic neighbors. 
This hostility, as I thought then, and do still think, was mainly 
engendered through the agency of the Louisville Jcmrnal, 
Mr. Prentice has always exerted an almost unbounded influ- 
ence in molding public opinion among a large portion of 
the people of Kentucky, and the recent Know -Nothing vic- 
tory in this State, is to be attributed, almost w^holly, to the 
energy displayed by him in the canvass. It may well be 
conceived, that such a man, turning, or pietending to turn, 
strongly anti-Catholic, would be able to sway the minds of 
many, who, if they would but think for themselves, might 
possibly come to conclusions much nearer the truth, than 
those worked out for them by the editor of the Journal, 

Knowing the utter falsity of the charges brought against 
the Koman Catholics of this country by the leaders of the 
Know-Nothing party, among whom Mr. Prentice was 
recognized as the foremost, and . believing that, possibly, 
some of my Protestant-fellow citizens might be disposed to 
weigh with fairness such evidences in disproof of the slanders 
brought against us as were within my reach, I commenced, 
in August last, the series of Letters herein contained. They 
have been hurriedly written, in moments snatched from 
business, and, as I am well aware, will afford to the reader 
but little beyond a plain statement of facts, and an unvar- 
nished picture of the new, and as I conceive, dangerous 
doctrine, which fanaticism is seeking to blend with the po- 
litical action of our hitherto free and happy people. 

I contend that the nature of our civil institutions, to insure 
their permanency, requires the full recognition, by every time 
American, of entire freedom of conscience ; and that no 
member of any church, sect, or denomination, sliould be 
made to feel, unless upon clear and positive testimony of 
treason to the State on the part of that religious body to 
which he may be attached, that his faith is a bar to any 
position, social or political, to which he may aspire. The 
leaders of the Know-Notbing party, though they have ran- 



PREFATORY REMARKS. ^ 

sacked, with untiring energy, every nook and corner of the 
land, in search of evidence to convict Eoman Catholics of 
being enemies to republicanism, and therefore dangerous 
citizens, have failed to show a single instance wherein they 
have been, in any degree, justly accusable of being less true 
to the constitution and laws of their country than those who 
have made all this outcry against them. Foiled in their 
efforts to prove against the resident Roman Catholics of this 
country treason, either latent or open, these enemies to the 
Catholic faith have been obliged, in order to make some 
show of justification for having introduced into our political 
party issues so extraordinary an element as that of proscrip- 
tion because of religious faith, to have recourse to the stale 
slanders against Catholics, concocted and promulgated, hun- 
dreds of years ago, by men who were systematically taught 
to believe that the Pope was the anti-Christ, and that the 
religion of three-fourths of the Christian world, was nothing 
better than a system of superstition and tyranny. But the 
day is past for these things to be believed by men of sense. 
Roman Catholics are everywhere, and their acts can be mea- 
sured. They embrace every class of men, from the most 
learned to the least tutored, and it requires more than the 
ipse dixit of popery-mad fanatics, and the interested specu- 
lations of unprincipled office-seekers and no-popery editors, 
who make merchandize of the prejudices of mankind, to 
render them suspected and despised. Proof before conviction, 
is not only a principle of law, but it embodies a sentiment 
innate to the American character ; and though fanatics may 
rave of the intolerance and superstition of the Catholic 
Church, and attempt to throw ridicule on observances, of the 
nature of which they are profoundly ignorant, they must do 
something more than rant and declaim, before they can 
induce the conservative portion of the American people to 
act upon their wild and unreasonable suggestions. 

The originators of the Know-Nothing movement were of 
course compelled to indicate some motives for their action, 
more or less plausible, in order to induce any considexable 



10 PREFATORY REMARKS. 

numbers of tlie American people to join with tliem. The 
most important of these motives is the charge brought 
against Roman Catholics, that they acknowledge a divided 
allegiance incompatible with their duty as good citizens. 
This is the same accusation which was alleged against the 
Catholics of the mother country, during the pendency of the 
Catholic Relief Bill, more than sixty years ago, and which, 
after receiving a most minute examination from a committtee 
of the House of Commons, was pronounced false by the 
Parliament of Great Britain. It must be remembered, that 
the writers in the interests of the Know-Nothing organization 
have not pretended to instance a single example going to 
show, in the remotest degree, that Catholics have been found 
wanting in true allegiance to the constitution and laws of 
their country. Their whole argument is based on the fact, 
that Roman Catholics, throughout the world, acknowledge 
the spiritual supremacy of the Pope. The very term spiritual 
used by the Church to indicate the character of the Pope's 
supremacy, should be sufficient to show these men, were 
they disposed to be at all candid, that his claim of supremacy 
cannot possibly embrace any allegiance which the State has 
a right to demand. The constitution expressly disclaims the 
right to control matters outside of the temporal order. **Con- 
gress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, 
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof/' It appears clearly 
from this, that the framers of the constitution intended to 
forbid all legislation which had for its object the restriction 
of the ricrhts of conscience. What is conscience ? It is that 
principle implanted in our souls by the Deity, for the purpose 
of directing our spiritual natures to the accomplishment of 
His will. Human laws which contravene the law of con- 
science, cannot bind it ; they have power over the bodies of 
men, but none over conscience, except in so far as they 
command things not opposed to the law by which it is governedi 
This is a principle of general application, which Catholics 
and Protestants are bound alike to uphold. 
But these men assume, that because Catholics acknowledge 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 11 

the right of tlie Pope to decide, for them, all questions of 
conscience, that, therefore, he may at any time decide that 
the constitution and laws of a State are opposed to the Law 
of God. Tiiis is sheer nonsense. What is a decision ? It 
is an award upon a contested point, pronounced by a tribunal 
recognized as authoritative by the parties at whose instance 
and for whose benefit it is rendered. A decision in the spi- 
ritual order, supposes, either the pre-existence of a doubt in 
the mind of the applicant for its rendition, or else two distinct 
parties, with contrary opinions, but who yet recognize the 
authority of a given tribunal to decide on the contested point. 
Do not the Presbyterians hold that the General Assembly of 
their sect, has power for them, to decide upon ail mooted 
questions touching the doctrines and discipline of their 
church ? And if this is a dangerous doctrine as applied in 
their own way by Catholics, is it not equally dangerous as 
applied in theirs by Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and 
the half hundred different other Christian denominations of 
the land ? The mere accidental location of the tribunal 
obviously does not affect the principle itself here unfolded. 
The Pope's authority being wholly spiritual, cannot possibly 
come in conffict with the civil affairs of this countiy, unless 
upon the contingency of the State's wantonly trampling on 
the rights of conscience. Do the leaders of the Know-Nothings 
movement seriously contemplate such a contingency ? Do 
they anticipate the arrival of a day when every city of our 
land shall have its contiguous Smithfield, where State religion 
recusants are to be hanged, drawn and quartered ? Their 
entire action seems to have for its object just such a state of 
things. 

What right have these men to suppose that Roman Catho- 
lics are desirous of changing the nature of our government ? 
The assumption that they are necessarily, and because of their 
religion, opposed to republicanism, is totally baseless. The 
principles upon which our free institutions are formed are 
precisely those the Catholic Church recognizes, as the very- 
best for the promotion of the interests of religion. These 



12 PREFATORY REMARKS. 

insure to her *' a fair field and no favor/' and this is all that 
she asks from any government ; but this even Catholic gov- 
ernments do not always accord to her. Catholicity is no 
new system ; the obligations it imposes on conscience are 
fixed, and it is not at all supposable that the framers of the 
constitution did not recognize these obligations, and fully 
weigh the question of their compatibility with our republican 
institutions. There has been no change in Catholic Church 
policy since the adoption of the constitution, and Catholics, 
as Catholics, have never attempted to conti*ol National or 
State legislation. They have not endeavored to influence 
Congressional action in accordance with their own peculiar 
religious views, as did a certain Protestant denomination in 
reference to the Sunday mails. Their ministers have not 
thought it incumbent on them to petition Congress against 
the passage of laws deemed necessary for the interests of our 
common country, as did the three thousand Protestant preach- 
ers of New England during the pendency of the Nebraska 
Kansas Bill. They have not introduced religious questions 
into the party politics of the day, nor presented to the world 
the spectacle of a divided Church on geographical limits, as 
have the principal Protestant societies, because their members 
could not think alike on the slavery question. It would 
seem to be a quality of Know-Nothing reasoning, that those 
only are to be suspected who have given no cause for 
suspicion. 

What do the leaders of the new party mean, when they 
speak of **apure American Christianity?" Do they wish 
to intimate, that God's Law requires in England, what it 
forbids in Russia ; or that a sin committed in Italy may 
become a virtue when enacted in Kentucky ? The Apostles 
were commanded to teach all nations, and as nationality sup- 
poses different forms of civil polity, it follows that the 
doctrines and morality which these Apostles were to teach, 
must have been of such a character as to render them equally 
adaptable to all of these distinct forms. True Christianity 
is not unsuited to any form of government, and if American 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 1$ 

Christianity would not be true Christianity in any other land, 
then it is not the Christianity of the gospel. And so, I 
argue, of any form of Christianity of any land; if trans- 
planting changes its nature, you may very safely conclude, 
that it is not a Divine, but a human institution. 

Those that have read both sides of the controversy between 
the editor of the Louisville Journal and myself, cannot have 
failed to notice, that though Mr. Prentice has brought 
charges against the Catholics of this country, and particularly 
against the Bishops, of holding opinions and obligations at 
variance with the fealty due by Ihem to the constitution and 
laws, he has failed to sustain these charges by any proof 
whatever. Hence, in order to divert the public mind from 
the real issue, he has not hesitated to introduce into the dis- 
cussion unnecessary and uncalled for strictures upon the 
religion of the Roman Catholics. Professing to desire for 
them entire freedom of worship, he, singularly enough, finds 
no other way to induce people to suspect their loyalty to the 
government, than by caricaturing their faith. If Catholics 
were really unfavorable to our institutions, can any man 
believe, that during the eighty years wdiich have elapsed since 
the formation of the government, no single act of a Roman 
Catholic could be pointed to tending to the establishment of 
such a charge ? The conduct of our enemies, in attacking 
our religion, when they should, to be consistent, attack our 
anti-republican acts, is a sure indication that they can get hold 
of no such acts to form the basis of an attack. But they are 
again inconsistent, for while they profess to desire perfect 
freedom of worship to Catholics, they make this very worship 
their only motive for depriving them of their civil privileges. 
They tell you, we only seek to deprive Roman Catholics of 
the right to hold office. But will their action, if they really 
intend to stop here, have the effect they desire ? Catholics 
are not all fools ; and if they find themselves living in 
communities, where they are looked upon by the mass of 
their fellow-citizens as either open or covert enemies, they 
will be compelled, for the sake of peace, to form communities 



14 PREFATORY REMARKS. 

of their own people, in different parts of the country, where, 
having popular majorities, they will be forced into the offices 
within the gift of such communities. Thus will be brought 
about the very state .of things which the members of the new 
organization affect so much to deprecate. But, as I have 
elsewhere indicated, the outcry raised by these men against 
the Roman Catholics of the United States, is nothing but a 
sham, gotten up for the promotion of the political aspirations 
of a few unscrupulous demagogues and party hacks, the sum 
total of whose interests in the institution of Christianity 
itself, may be measured by the phrase, *'* the loaves and fishes." 
Know-No thingisnl seeks to keep the Catholics out of 
office. Are Roman Catholics greedy of holding official 
positions ? You, my Protestant fellow -citizens, know that 
such is not the case. But suppose they had their fair share 
of the public places, instead of holding, as they do, scarcely 
one office in a hundred, what evils to the country could these 
Catholic office-holders possibly bring about ? I can imagine 
none, unless they became peculators on the public purse, a 
charge, which, so far as I am advised, has never been brought 
against them. I am wholly unable to see, that the Catholic 
county-clerk, the Catholic magistrate, or the Catholic member 
of the legislature, would possess any better means of fomenting 
treason, than the Catholic lawyer, or merchant, or physician. 
But these gentlemen, who claim for themselves all the patriot- 
ism of the land, begin by asserting that a Catholic shall not 
be elevated to any office of honor or profit within their gift ; 
and their next step will naturally be, that none of the faithful 
shall be allowed to employ a Catholic lawyer or physician, 
or purchase of a Catholic tradesman. If I am unfit, because 
of my faith, to record a deed as county-clerk, I am equally 
unfit, because of this same faith, to file a bill, as a lawyer, 
or bandage a broken limb, as a surgeon. The mind naturally 
reasons, that if a man ought to be proscribed as to one of his 
privileges, he is unworthy to exercise any privilege at all. 
The Know-Nothing party, if successful, cannot stop with 
depriving Catholics of the privilege to hold office. The ball 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 15 

which its advocates seek to set in motion, is at the top of an 
inclined plain, and the slightest impetus will send it crashing 
and thundering on its destructive course, till every civil pri- 
vilege and every religious right of the Roman Catholic will 
be obliterated. 

Nor can the evil influence of such mad -brained folly end 
with the prostration of the Roman Catholics. Bigotiy is 
insatiable, and its appetites will not be satisfied till other vic- 
tims are immolated on its altar. And here, our once free 
and happy people are to witness a war of sects. Is it the 
Methodist, or the Unitarian, or the Episcopalian, who is next 
to feel the stripes of this rod of proscription ? Protestants 
of America 1 follow to its legitimate results the idea I have 
indicated for your consideration, and decide for yourselves if 
it be wise or Christian to seek the abridgment of the rights 
of conscience. Consider the evils which a vv^ar of creeds 
must necessarily bring upon the v/hole community. These 
evils, in the moral order alone, should cause all well-disposed 
men to pause and reflect. Among them, not the least will 
be the indoctrination of a large portion of our population, 
and particularly the young, with an insane hatred for men, 
fashioned as themselves, and for whose salvation, no less than 
for that of others, the Redeemer came into the world, and 
suffered and was nailed to the cross. This passion, you must 
acknowledge, is repugnant to the Christian character ; but it 
is one, you must also acknowledge, inseparable from a war of 
races or creeds. The most casual observer need but look 
around him, in order to convince himself, that already this 
dangerous indoctrination is going on at a fearful rate. You 
must recollect, that very many of those w^ho have been influ- 
enced to side against the recognition of the civil rights of 
Roman Catholics, are not professors of religion ; that fewer 
still have a correct understanding of that eternal law of love, 
which forms the basis of true Christianity, and that most of 
these are practically unable to discern the distinction between 
a certain faith and the worshipers attached to it. Hence 
have taken place the numerous outbreaks already recorded 



16 PREFATORY REMARKS. 

against the Know-Nothing paiiy, and which have involved 
the lives and property of Roman Catholics. That there are 
many attached to the new parly who are capable of seeing 
and rightly appreciating the distinction to which I refer, I 
have no doubt ; still, these do not indicate the rale, but only 
the exception. Fanaticism is the blindest of all passions, and 
those who are under its dominion have no power to weigh 
the consequences of their actions. Influenced by its baneful 
spirit, the most revolting crimes present to the eyes of the 
fanatic the appearance of angelic virtues. Many Protestants 
assume that Roman Catholics are fanatical; but this is only 
an assumption, and, as I contend, a false one. Still, even 
were it true, is not fanaticism a sin ? — and are not those 
who are seeking to implant it in the minds of the Protestants 
of this country guilty of the same crime they deprecate in the 
Roman Catholic ? How can they justify in themselves what 
they condemn in others ? 

The Know-Nothing editors are much in the habit of charg- 
ing upon the foreign portion of the population that they are 
frequently a cost to our corporations, and they attempt to 
prove this charge by exhibiting the quarterly reports of the 
poor-house and hospital wardens. This is clearly an unfair 
mode of reckoning. Our own citizens seldom engage in 
those avocations, wherein their health or lives are exposed to 
more than ordinary danger. The exposed situations of labor 
are always filled by foreigners, and principally by the much- 
abused Irish. Who are they that build our railroads and 
wharves, and drain our marsh lands ? Who are they that 
pave our streets, dig our wells and cisterns, and do all the 
rough labor upon our public and private buildings ? All, or 
nearly all, are Irish. It is but natural, then, that those 
so much exposed, and unavoidably so, should be subject not 
only to accidents to life and limb, but that they shouLl also 
contract diseases inseparable from constant exposure in our 
climate. Such being the case, it is not at all wonderful that 
in the midst of such a population, there should be frequent 
instances of broken down constitutions and helpless families. 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 17 

The question naturally presents itself — are the works, upon 
which our foreign horn population find employment, neces- 
sary works ? We are hound to conclude that the American 
people deem them necessary, as they are undertaken ^t their 
own instance, and for their own henefit ; and if this he so, 
where is the justice in charging upon some of these people 
that they are a tax on our corporations, in the face of the fact, 
that they have lost in the service of these very corporations 
the ability to provide for themselves ? I have myself been 
often taunted by Protestants, some of whom, at least, to my 
personal knowledge, were indebted to the labor of foreigners 
for their present affluence, with the fact that a large propor- 
tion of the public and private charities of our own city are 
contributed for the benefit of Irish Catholics ; and one of 
these gentlemen, who bears the character of a Christian phi- 
lanthropist, very pointedly intimated that ** Catholics ought 
to support their own poor.'* If Eoman Catholics were in 
the habit of shirking the duty of charity, there might possibly 
he some show of reason for these taunts ; but this is not the case. 
The Church teaches the exercise of charity as a matter of posi- 
tive obligation, nor do I believe that Catholics, according 
to their ability, are justly chargeable with omitting this duty. 
The Catholic poor in our cities, doubtless, are in greater 
relative proportion than the Protestant poor, but, at the same 
time, the Protestant rich are in greater relative proportion 
than the Catholic rich. If a single rich Roman Catholic, in 
an otherwise exclusively Protestant community, would be 
justly exempt from the obligation of charity, then, it is pos- 
sible, the reasoning which would teach that each denomina- 
tion shall support its own poor, is good reasoning. The 
merest tyro in Christian ethics, however, could never be 
influenced by such reasoning. He sees a parallel to it in the 
Book of Genesis, where it is recorded of Cain, the first mur- 
derer, that being questioned by the Almighty in reference to 
his brother Abel, he answered, with studied hypocrisy : ''I 
know not ; am I my brother's keeper ? " 

Here is the question plainly stated : Our citizens are 

2 



18 PREFATORY REMARKS. 

interested in the prosecution of certain public and private 
works, and finding none among themselves willing or able 
to undergo the hard labor and dangers to health and life, 
incidental to their accomplishment, are compelled to draw 
their operatives from the ranks of our adopted citizens. Some 
of these have died at their posts, and left helpless widows and 
orphan children without resources in a strange land ; and 
others have contracted diseases, and must either be cared for 
by public or private charity, or be left to die in utter destitution. 
Shall those who engaged these poor persons in the dangerous 
avocations wherein life or health was lost, plead exemption 
from the obligation of charity towards the widows, and or- 
phans, and invalids, become such in their own service ? Is 
it honest, or fair, that Roman Catholics shall be taunted 
with furnishing so many objects of public and private 
charity, in the face of the notorious fact, that the blood, and 
tears, and destitution, and death, met with among the poor 
Irish of our cities, is but the natural result, in our climate, of 
the labor and exposure incidental to those avocations in which 
they have been employed by Americans and Protestants ? 

While upon this subject, let me remark, that American 
Catholics are as much opposed to the reception into this 
country of European paupers as any other religious body in 
the land. The system pursued by some of the European 
governments to impose upon us the worthless portion of their 
populations, including criminals and paupers, is one which 
every Catholic will denounce as highly reprehensible, and 
which justly calls for such legislative action as will effect 
its abatement. But the honest and hardy laborer, who seeks 
within our wide domain a home for life, even though unpos- 
sessed, upon his arrival, of means to insure a week's support, 
is no pauper. Take him as a mere man-machine, and his 
bones, and muscles, and sinews, are so much capital, and 
these, invested in the Bank of Labor, will return a dividend 
to the aggregate prosperity of the country, more permanently 
useful, than would the importation, in his stead, of a thousand 
dollars in gold. Look not, then, my Protestant fellow-conn- 



k 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 19 

trymen, on the poor Irish or German laborer as one out of 
place in our free land. It is here, precisely, that he is wanted. 
He may have faults ; but he has also virtues. Contempt for 
his poverty, and too rigorous exactions on account of his 
faults, can never have any good effect to relieve the one or 
correct the other. Kindness and consideration may raise him 
in the scale of humanity ; ill-treatment and distrust will not 
fail to lower, in that scale, both him and yourselves. 

It is observable, that those editors who are now advocating 
the interests of the Know-Nothing organization, but a few 
years ago, were engaged in singing paeans over Louis Kos- 
suth, the ex-governor of Hungary who was at that very time 
endeavoring to involve our government in difficulties with 
foreign powers. The ''foreign influence'' spoken of by 
several of the fathers of the republic, and against which they 
cautioned the American people, was here before the eyes of 
these veiy patriotic editors, but until Henry Clay, whose 
memory I delight to honor, indicated to his revolutionary 
Excellency that he was going beyond the spirit of our insti- 
tutions, not one word of rebuke did these self-constituted 
guardians of republicanism utter against the artful and med- 
dling Hungarian. But now, they boldly proclaim, that the 
caution against ** foreign influence" by Washington and 
Jefferson, had reference to our foreign-bom citizens — to those 
who have cast their lot for life amongst us, and who have 
necessarily the same interest in the prosperity and happiness 
of the country as the native-born population. 

Again, these same editors, during the recent visit to this 
country of Archbishop Bedini, the Papal Nuncio, joined with 
the infidel German radicals of Cincinnati, and elsewhere, in 
villifying the Archbishop for his supposed action against 
what they termed Italian liberty. In vain did American 
Catholics protest against the exhibition of a wild and reck- 
less fanaticism towards one charged with a peaceful mission 
to our government ; in vain did the Nuncio deny the slanders 
propagated against him; in vain did high-minded and 
candid Protestants endeavor to set the matter in its true 



20 PREFATORY REMARKS. 

light. The editors were dumb ; and if there ever did appear 
in any of the newspapers conducted by these now exceedingly 
Christian gentlemen, a single paragraph of reprehension of 
the conduct of a band of avowed infidels, who openly sought 
the life of the Nuncio, I have no recollection of having seen 
it. But a change has come over these editors. The German 
infidel and the Irish Catholic, though antagonistic as watei 
and oil, are now put in the same scale. If the foreign infidel 
fulminates against the head of the government his manifesto 
for having acknowledged that thanks were due to Almighty 
God for presei'ving us in peace and filling the land with 
blessings, the foreign-born Eoman Catholic, though recog- 
nizing in all its force the idea indicated by the language 
of the President, is at once, because of his foreign birth, 
classed with the radical and atheist, and made to bear an 
opprobrium which only attaches to the latter. If the dispute 
lies between the Freimanner and the Catholics, the sympathies 
of these eminently Protestant editors is all on the side of the 
infidel ; but when foreign radicals are guilty of attempts to 
revolutionizo American institutions, the foreign-born Eoman 
Catholic, who never had a sympathy with their agrarian 
notions, is set down as their aid or and abettor.* 

It has been so often stated by the enemies of the Catholic 
Church, that she is the foe to all progress, that the idea seems 
to have become a fixture, as it were, in the Protestant mind. 
There is an obvious reason for this prejudice. Most of our 
literature is derived from anti-Catholic sources. In England, 
until within a comparatively short time. Catholics were by 
law forbidden to engage in those pursuits which lead to emi- 
nence. They were not allowed to print or publish, and 

*Since writing the above, I have seen it stated, that in the recent elec- 
tions in Kew York and some others of the eastern cities, the foreign radical 
element of the population voted with the Know-Nothings. This is as it 
should be. These men have at last found their true position. When the 
editor of the Louisville Journal recently attempted to classify these men 
^th the Roman Catholics, as being antagonistic to the Know-Nothing 
crganization, he was not, most likely, aware of the fusion that was being 
coniummated between his party and German radicalism. 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 21 

consequently, the aspersions upon Catholic faith and practice, 
thus of necessity left uncontradicted, came, in the course of 
time, to be viewed as ** confirmation strong as proofs from 
Holy Writ," against the Church. This being the case for 
over two centuries, can it be wondered at, that the minds of 
men should be filled with almost irradicable prejudices in 
reference to a system of religion everywhere spoken against, 
and whose upholders were afraid, on account of the laws 
in force for its suppression, to whisper even a mild defense ? 
The common people, always greedy of that kind of reading 
which gave excitement to their passions, were plied with 
horrible tales of monkish superstition and fanaticism, written 
by men who knew that they were not only catering to a 
morbid feeling of hatred of Catholicity general among the 
masses, but that they were, also, in almost every page of 
their writings, circulating glaring and palpable falsehoods. 
The' prejudices thus engendered and kept alive have come 
down to us, from father to son, and from generation to gene- 
ration, so that, even in our day, there are many, who, though 
they have never read a Catholic book, or heard a Catholic 
sermon, or entered a Catholic church, or even had a Catholic 
neighbor, have no other idea of Catholicity than that it is a 
system of crude fanaticism, if not of open rebellion against 
God. 

Occasionally, here and there, a strong intellect might be 
found, much to the surprise of the Protestant community, to 
give up his prejudices, and attach himself to the old Church. 
The excuses given for these instances of what evangelicals 
called perversion, were always of such a character, that those 
outside the Church were still satisfied that Protestantism 
itself was not to be held accountable for them. They were 
crazy, or had been operated on by improper motives ; and, 
even to this day, when no other conceivable motive for 
conversion to Catholicity, except that of a desire to uphold 
the truth, can be indicated, the converts are held by many to 
be deranged in their intellects. Of late years, however, there 
has been going on, in the very heart of Protestantism itself, 



22 PREFATORY REMARKS. 

a yearning for sometliing unattainable within the limits of its 
jarring domain. Men have begun to feel the necessity of 
unity, and to aspire after peace. Wearied with its flight 
over a sea of doubt and distrust, the dove seeks again to rest 
its drooping wings in the ark of the Church of God. 

Those who speak so flippantly, and write so fluently against 
the Catholic Church, either do not know themselves, or do 
not wish others to know how many benefits this much abused 
Church and its members have conferred on society. The 
old adage says, '* ignorance is bliss,*' and if this be so, then 
the state of extreme felicity enjoyed by these carping gen- 
tlemen and their confiding dupes cannot be othei-wise than 
wonderful. Never was there a more striking exemjplification 
of the confidence inspired by ignorance, or by that ** little 
learning which is a dangerous thing,*' than that lately pre- 
sented by the tribe of politicians suddenly turned theologians, 
and by that other kindred tribe of preachers suddenly turned 
politicians. The former class have, however, made the most 
marvelous progress. Ignorant men, reared in the bush, and 
small-fry village politicians, at the cry of the Pope ! the 
Pope ! have suddenly started forth, armed cap a pie with 
historical and theological weapons, and with every hair in 
their empty heads erect with inspiration ! Some of these 
men, unused to so great a pressure on their very limited 
modicum of brains, are already mad, and an indefinite number 
of them are but a few degrees removed from the same sad state. 
Truly, we have fallen on an enlightened age, in which insanity 
has been installed into the position of teacher and guide. 

Have these men, or those who take their statements on 
trust, ever read history ? Have they ever traced on the his- 
toric page the gradual progress of modern civilization ? 
Have they learned by what successive steps, and by whose 
agency, Christianity was spread over the world ? Have they 
inquired, to whom we are indebted for much of the advance- 
ment of literature, and for most of the great discoveries and 
inventions in science and in the arts, the comforts of which 
we are now reaping in bo great abundance ? If they have 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 23 

not, then, for their own sakes, if for no other consideration, 
they should be silent, until they acquire a little information. 
To reason with the fanatic and the bigot is but a waste of 
time ; but for the benefit of the conservative and truth-lov- 
ing portion of my fellow -citizens, — by far the largest portion 
of the community — I have collected, from different published 
works, a condensed statement of what we owe to the Catholic 
Church and to its members, in the several departments of 
Religion, Civilization, Literatm*e and the Arts, and in 
Political Institutions. 

I. Religion. We owe to the Catholic Church the pre- 
servation of the Bible, through storm and revolution, through 
barbarian invasions and civil feuds, for fifteen centuries pre- 
ceding the period of the so called reformation. No one 
acquainted with history, can deny that the first Protestants 
received the Sacred Scriptures from the hands of that very 
Church, which they were pleased nevertheless to denounce as 
the constant enemy of the Bible 1 And, along with the 
Bible, Protestants received from the Catholic Church all 
those great principles, institutions, and traditions of Christi- 
anity, which they choose to designate as fundamental, and 
which are admitted by all *' orthodox " Christians. Not 
only this, but all Protestants of the present day owe it to the 
Catholic Church, that they are descendants of a Christian 
instead of a Pagan ancestry ; for all history proclaims the 
fact, that every nation that was ever converted from Paganism 
to Christianity was so converted by Catholic missionaries, 
acting in communion with the Roman See, and generally 
armed with the broad seal of the Papal commission ! Is it 
not supremely absurd to hear men rail out so bitterly against 
a Church to which they owe so much — in fact, everything — 
which causes them to be Christians at all, and without whose 
beneficial influence on the minds and hearts of their ancestors, 
they would probably have been reared heathens instead of 
Christians ! 

n. Civilization. Our revilers equally forget what we owe I 

to the Catholic Church in the department of general civili- f 



m 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 



zation. Without her agency, the world would, in all proba- 
bility, never have been civilized at all. Alone and single- 
handed, she for centuries successfully stemmed the rushing 
tide of barbarism, which threatened society with dissolution. 
After having converted the Northmen, whose descendants 
now constitute the bulk of the most civilized nations, she set 
about the noble work of controlling their passions, directing 
their morals, humanizing their manners, and developing their 
naturally vigorous intellectual powers. Her patient labor of 
love was rewarded with the most abundant fruits. Fierce 
wolves were gradually changed into lambs of her flock. 
Tyranny and liceMiousness were curbed, and freedom was 
enabled to breathe more freely among the down-trodden 
masses. Serfism, or that degrading species of white slavery 
which was closely intertwined with the feudal system, was 
gradually abolished wherever the influence of the Catholic 
Church could extend, or her voice could be heard ; and mil- 
lions of poor slaves thus became freemen. In reality, we owe 
it mainly to her agency that we were born freemen instead of 
slaves. Yet more. To her is woman principally indebted 
for the exalted position she now occupies in society. The 
Church found her, a slave, but raising the degraded daughter 
of Eve, before doomed to an ignoble vassalage, to the dignity 
of the daughter of Mary, she placed her as the equal of man, 
and gave to her that Christian freedom, which is ** the liberty 
of the glory of the children of God." 

III. Literature and the Arts. Do our maligners know 
what the Catholic Church has done for mankind in this 
department ? If not, let them glance at the following sum- 
mary of their indebtedness, and blush, for very shame, at 
their past ignorance or dishonesty. 

1. We owe to the Church the preservation of that consider- 
able portion of ancient classical literature which has descended 
to us, and which would probably have perished but for the 
patient and zealous labors of her clergy and monks, who de- 
voted much of their time to the transcription of manuscripts. 

2. We owe to Catholics all our modern languages, which 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 29 

sprung up and were carried to considerable perfection during 
what are called *' the dark ages/' long before the era of the 
boasted reformation. 

3. Our modem poetry, which has since been greatly per- 
fected, received its first beginning and its early development 
during the middle ages, when for the first time, rhythm or 
rhyme was introduced into poetry. 

4. The paper on which we write, the noble art of printing, 
which has diffused thought over the world, and the postoffice 
which has so greatly facilitated intercommunication among 
mankind, are all of Catholic origin. 

5. The principal colleges and universities of Europe were 
founded by Catholics, and it was they, in fact, who first 
originated the idea of an university, as well as that of literary 
societies. 

6. Catholic missionary zeal, in early ages, led to numerous 
discoveries in geography, and thereby gave that powerful 
stimulus to commerce which has since resulted so beneficially 
to the world. 

7. It was a Catholic who discovered the mariner's compass, 
and, through its agency, rendered widely extended commerce 
possible. 

8. Guided by the unening magnetic needle, the Catholic 
Columbus discovered the continent which we inhabit, and 
other Catholic mariners — Vespucci, the Cabots, Cabrals, 
<fec., — completed what Columbus had so well begun. 

9. The musical notes of the gamut, which h^ve furnished 
an alphabet to musical sounds, and rendered music a science, 
are the invention of a Catholic monk, Guido d'Arezzo. 

10. The organ, and other musical instruments, have a 
similar origin, as well as bells in churches and town-halls. 

11. We owe to Catholics the first introduction of glass as 
an article of domestic convenience, and we are indebted to 
them likewise for the beautiful art of staining glass, which 
has since been partially lost. 

12. It was a Catholic monk, Schwarz of Cologne, who 
first inyented-— or at least introduced into Europe ttt- gui^- 

• B - 



86 PREFATORY REMARKS. 

powder, that terrible agent which has since exerted so powerful 
an influence over the destinies of mankind. 

13. It was a Catholic, too, the monk Gerbert, who first 
introduced among Europeans the Arabic numbers, which we 
now use, and which are indispensable in all modern calcula- 
tion ; and it is to Catholics we are indebted for the first 
development of the sciences of arithmetic and algebra. 

14. It was another Catholic monk, Salvino of Pisa, who 
invented the lenses or glasses by which the old are enabled to 
read, and the short-sighted are relieved from their distressing 
infirmity. 

15. The clock and the watch are both Catholic inventions ; 
the former of the tenth, the latter of the fourteenth century. 

16. Finally, we owe to Catholics the revival of the beau- 
tiful art of painting ; the discovery or invention of the art of 
engraving ; the discovery of the Galvanic fluid, named after 
its discovei-er, Br. Galvani ; the introduction of silk and its 
fabrics into Europe, and the discoveiy and perfecting of 
probably the most beautiful style of architecture — the Gothic. 

We must blot from the pages of history all these incontest- 
able facts, and many more of a kindred character, before we can 
excuse the flippant ignorance or blind prejudices of our mod- 
em cnisaders against Catholicity. In their bitter and vulgar 
tirades, they are basely slandering their greatest benefactors, 
and outraging with vile maledictions the tombs of their own 
ancestors as well as ours. But I will now pass to the fourth 
and last department, referred to above — the one upon which our 
newly fledged theologians are wont to lay the greatest stress. 

IV. Political Institutions. We are told that the 
Catholic Church is the sworn enemy of all liberty, and the 
close ally of all despotism. Whole volumes of declamation 
have recently gone forth to the world on this prolific theme. 
Now what are the facts, as unfolded in faithful history ? 
One proHiiQ.ent f^ct is often a sufficient answer to whole pages 
of declamatory assertion, Allow me to give you a few /acts 
on this subject, wliich no well-read man will venture to deny, 
and the inference from which is obvious to the dullest capacity. 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 27 

1. The Catholic Churcli and the Popes secured the triumph 
of the Cross over the Crescent, in that long and eventful 
struggle of a thousand years between the two rival banners, 
which decided the fate of Christian civilization and of human 
liberty among our ancestors. The Cross, upheld by the 
Popes, and by brave Catholic soldiers, animated to the contest 
by their eloquent voice, finally triumphed over the Crescent, 
and the result of this victory was the securing of European 
independence from the crushing yoke of Mahommedan des- 
potism. Had the contest terminated differently, all liberty 
and all civilization would have disappeared from the earth, 
and, in this case, the development of free institutions would 
have been simply an impossibility. Thus, we clearly owe it 
to the Catholic Church and to the Popes, that it was possible 
for our ancestors and for ourselves to be freemen. But for 
the triumph of the Cross over the Crescent, our condition 
would now probably be similar to that of those countries in 
Asia and Africa which are at present, and have been for 
centuries, bowed down in the dust under the Mahommedan 
fanaticism, with all its attendant social evils. 

2. We are in the habit of boasting of such political insti- 
tutions as trial by jury, exemption from taxation without 
previous representation, regular courts for the administration 
of justice, and the personal security provided for by the habeas 
corpus. Now, do our revilers ever have the honesty to state 
to their dupes, that all these precious political rights, which 
lie at the basis of all liberty, are, every one of them, of Catho- 
lic origin ? Oh, no 1 They would thereby ruin their pet-theory 
of Papal tyranny and Catholic despotism ! Yet every one 
knows that all these institutions were established by Catholics, 
more than three hundred years before Protestantism was 
ever heard of. 

3. The theory of our opponents would lead one to believe, 
that wherever Catholicity prevails, and is predominant, no 
political liberty, and especially no republic, could exist. 
What is the fact ? It is as undeniable as it is important, 
that Catholic communities founded ALL the republics which 



28^ PREFATORY REMARKS. 

ever existed in the world in Christian times, up to the date 
of our own — 1776. The Catholic Church may, in fact, be 
styled the mother of republics. In the twelfth century there 
sprang up, under the fostering care of the Popes, the Italian 
republics of Venice, Genoa, Florence, Sienna, and others, 
and in the fourteenth century, the Swiss Cantons, under the 
guidance of William Tell and his associates, established their 
free confederation, which subsists to the present day. The 
two little republics of St. Marino, in Italy, and of Andorra, 
in Spain, were founded, the first by a Catholic monk, in the 
fourth century, and the second by a Catholic Bishop, in the 
ninth. The former is the oldest republic in the world, and 
one of the most radical in its democracy. What is most 
remarkable about it, is the fact, that it is surrounded by the 
Papal territory, and that the Popes have always been the 
vigilant guardians and protectors of its independence. 

4. We are told that all free institutions had their origin 
in what is called the Reformation. What says history on 
this subject ? Prussia has been Protestant for three hundred 
years, and though she has had a shadow of a constitution 
since 1848, she is, and always has been, a wretched despot- 
ism, with Church and State united. Sweflen and Denmark 
have been blessed with the reformed religion for three centu- 
ries, and Sweden and Denmark are no better off than 
Prussia. The same may be said of Holland, with some 
modification, introduced only since the revolutions of 1848. 
The Reformation in England rather depressed than elevated 
popular liberty ; the crown over-awed and almost swallowed 
up every other element of government, from the date of the 
Reformation to the revolution in 1688 — a period of one 
hundred and fifty years. The Reformation had full sway in 
many parts of the world, for two hundred and fifty years 
before our Declaration of Independence ; — did it, during all 
this time, found a single republic, or even develop a single 
democratic principle before unknown ? If so, when and 
where ? 

5. Was it Protestantism exclusively, which established 



TREFATORY REMARKS. 29 

our own republic ? Did we not Iiave to struggle for our 
liberties against a Protestant government, and did not a great 
Catholic power step gallantly to oar defense against our 
Protestant oppressor ? Did not Catholics iight side by side 
with their Protestant brethren in our revolutionary war, and 
did they not behave as gallantly in the field as their associates ? 
It would seem that Charles Carroll of Carrolton, a Eoman 
Catholic, who ventured so much in the cause of American 
liberty, was permitted by Providence to survive all his col- 
leagues, as if for the very purpose of rebuking the fanaticism 
which now seeks to deprive his co-religionists of their civil 
rights ! 

Does any man ask me why I am a Eoman Catholic ? If 
so, let him but study the history of the Church, and he will 
no longer wonder. Let him investigate her claims to the 
possession of those unerring evidences, which even human 
reason recognizes as criteria of truth, viz : Unity, Sanctity, 
Catholicity, and Apostolicity ; — Unity of faith and practice ; 
Holiness as to the doctrines taught and the morality inculca- 
ted ; Catholicity, in carrying these saving doctrines, and this 
heavenly morality, to every quarter of the globe ; Aposto- 
licity, in being able to trace the line of her authorized teachers 
back to the Apostles of our Lord. Let him also study the 
beauty and appropriateness of her liturgy, and her religious 
ceremonial ; let him, casting prejudice aside, follow that via 
crucis trod by the footsteps of her Saints in every age, and 
reflect on the holiness of that faith, which was able to induce 
the rich and the talented, the poor and the unlettered, the 
master and the slave, the king and the peasant, all alike, 
to strive, and to suffer, and to die, in order to uphold its 
truth. Let him do but this, and he will learn why it is that 
I cling with an abiding attachment to the faith of my fathers 
— to that eternal Church of God, wherein the Holy Spirit 
ever abideth. She it is that has set up land-marks, in 
every age of her existence, to be the guides of future genera- 
tions in their search after truth. She it is that changes not, 
though all things else are ever changing. She it is that 



80 PREFATORY REMARKS. 

gives heavenly strength to human weakness, and chooseth the 
foolish things of the world that she may confound the wise. 
SIi3 it is thit has the gospel preached to th3 poor, and has 
no compromises for the rich and powerful. ** I love, O 
Lord, the beauty of Thy house, and the place where Thy 
glory dwelleth.*' This religion, in the language of Cardinal 
Wiseman, ** alone carries me back to the infancy of Chris- 
tianity, and unites, in unbroken connection, through ages 
of fulfillment and prophecy, the creed which I profess, with 
the inspired visions of the earlier dispensation.'* 

In conclusion, my Protestant countrymen, I can find no 
more fitting language in which to address you, than that used 
by the celebrated Father O'Leary, in his address to the Pro- 
testants of Great Britain in the last century : '* What is to us 
the intolerance of past ages if we imitate it not ? We are a 
new world raised on the ruins of the former, and if hitherto 
W3 could not agree as Christians, it is high time to live 
together as men. There is land enough for us all ; and it is 
by far better to see towns and cities rearing tlieir heads on 
the banks of our rivers, than to see our fertile country depopu- 
lated by intolerance. In vain do we give ourselves up to 
hatred and vengeance — we soon learn that such cruel pleasure 
was never adapted to the heart of man ; that in hating others, 
we punish ourselves ; that humanity disclaims violence, and 
that the law of God, in commanding us to love our neighbor, 
has consulted the most upright and reasonable dictates of the 
human heart.*' 

Wishing ** a long life and a haj)py death to all of Adam's 
children," permit me to subscribe myself, 
Very sincerely, yours, 

A Kentucky Cathouc. 



INTRODUCTORY ARTICLES. 



GEORGE D. PRENTICE AND CATHOLIC PRO- 
SCRIPTION.* 

In the year 1832, 1 became acquainted witli Geo. D. Pren- 
tice, and since that time I have been a constant reader of 
his paper. I have not only had access to his opinions, (if 
I may so express myself,) as embodied in his various 
writings during nearly a quarter of a century ; but I have 
also had frequent, and, during the first five years of our 
acquaintance, almost constant opportunities to hear, in his 
private conversations Avith his friends, his ideas upon a great 
variety of topics, political, social, and religious. 

I need scarcely say, that Mr. Prentice's political predi- 
lections were also my own, and that I had always entertained 
for him the warmest regard. I believed him to be a man 
whose integrity Vv^as unimpeachable, and who would scorn 
to use, for any supposed political advantage, means not con- 
sistent with self-respect, a delicato sense of honor, and a just 
regard for the religious feelings, as well as the civil rights, 
of any portion of his fellow-citizens. At no time, till within 
the past two months, had he expressed in my hearing, or, so 
far as my observation has gone, recorded in his paper, any 
opinion savoring of apprehension of danger to the govern- 
ment on account of the Roman Catholics. At no time had 
he failed to accord to them their just meed of approbation, 
as good citizens of a government to which they were as 
warmly attached as were their Protestant neighbors. At no 
time had he intimated any suspicion of their fidelity to the 
Constitution and laws, or seemed to regard them otherwise 
than as men whose patriotism was not to be suspected. In 
his social intercourse with individual members of the Cath- 
olic Church, Mr. Pkentice always appeared to be respectful, 
kind and courteous. Nor do I believe that this was a mere 
show of courtesy on the part of the editor. His whole 

* Communicated to the '• LouisTilla Daily Courier" of July, 27th, 1855. 



o 



2 INTRODUCTORY ARTICLES. 



course ericlently exhibited the fact, that he felt his Catholic 
fellow-citizens were worthy of both confidence and respect. 

Let us now contrast George D. Prentice, as I have 
known him for nearly twenty-four years, with this same 
George D. Prentice, new-born in the Know-Nothing 
party. The change is complete, but also most humiliating. 
Self-respect and consistency have both left him together ; 
hatred is in his heart, and dissimulation on his tongue. It 
were sad to see the dethronement of a noble intellect, even 
when brought about by physical causes over which the pos- 
sessor could have no control. But, oh ! how much more sad, 
to see this same intellect debasing and prostituting its powers 
to un^vorthy ends ! The Louisville Journal, to which we 
weL'e wont to look for well seasoned, calm and logical arti- 
cles upon the political topics of the day, now comes to us 
filled, morning after morning, with most unwarrantable and 
bitter denunciations of inoffensive and unoffending Catholics. 
And why ? Not because of any personal injury they have 
done the editor, nor of any insult they have given him. Not 
because of any overt act of theirs against the laws. Not 
because of any combination by them, for or against any set 
of men or political principles ; but simply because — '* oh, 
shame, where is thy blush V — because they choose toworsMp 
God as did their fathers before them ! 

Is it not truly humiliating that, in this country, to which 
ilvQ editor's forefathers, as well my own, fled for the very 
object that they might worship God according to the dictates 
of their consciences — in a land, too, whose constitution, 
framed by wise men, positively foi'bids a religious test as a 
qualification for citizenship or office — a man can be found, 
claiming the right by his learning and talents to form public 
opinion, so callous to the teachings of the past, and so 
regardless of the future prosperity and happiness of his 
country, as to uphold for tlie favorable consideration of 
American freemen, political proscription on account of reli- 
gious faith? Tlie editor has no excuse for his course in this 
matter. The past of our countiy is before him. He has 
had Catholic friends and neighbors, whose whole lives would 
give the lie to the chaige of their want of patriotism. He 
talks of '* political Romanism.'* The editor must feel his 
cheek mantle with shame while he pens such miserable 
twaddle. Outside of the Pontifical States there is no such 
thing as political Romanism. There is not a Roman Cath- 
olic on tJiis wbole continent that owes civil or political alle- 



J 



INTRODUCTORY ARTICLES. 83 

giance to tlie Pope. Tiie charge that tliey do, is a foul libel, 
a tLousand times advanced and a thousand times refuted, 
and it has been used only by bigots and knaves, to inspire 
the ignorant with distrust of a body of Christians whose 
patriotism is not less pare than is that of any other denom- 
ination in the land. 

Who, of all the signers of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, risked so much of worldly wealth by that act as did 
Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, a Roman Catholic ? Did 
Mr. Prentice ever hear of a Roman Catholic who thouglit 
Charles Carroll too patriotic ? Can he name a single Ro- 
man Catholic who, either in his writings or in his public or 
private acts, has sliown himself other than a true lover of 
the liberties of the country, as bequeathed to us by our 
fathers, and bought for us by the blood of Protestants and 
Catholics alike? If this be true — and that it is true no 
sane and right-hearted man will deny — what have the Ro- 
man Catholics done to call down upon them this mountain 
of obloquy from the editor of the Louisville Journal ? Have 
they monoj^olized more than their share of the offices of 
honor and profit under the State or Federal Government ? 
Not so. Roman Catliolics are seldom office-seekers, and 
from that of President of tlie United States to the pettiest 
official position under a county magistracy, you w411 not find 
one Roman Catholic to fifty Protestant incumbents. Have 
those few Roman Catholics Vvlio have held, or do hold office, 
failed to discharge the duties of the same with honesty and 
fidelity ? Have they used their offices to pander to the real 
or supposed . intei-ests of their co-religionists ? No such 
charge has ever been made against them. Can the editor 
point out a single Roman Catholic official defaulter ? I defy 
him to do so. 

^ Are the Roman Catholics chargeable as citizens with 
qualities dangerous to tlie peace of communities ? Are thej 
less obedient to the laws, less honest, less charitable than 
their Protestant fellow-citizens ? You never hear of them 
molesting a Protestant meeting, or attacking a Protestant 
church. They are not in the habit of insulting those who 
dissent from them. 

Was the late Patrick Maxcy any the worse citizen or 
patriot because he was a Catholic and an Irishman ? Who 
that knows the Catholic Lancasters, and Hamiltons, and 
Elders, and Hanleys, and Abells, and Spaldings, and 
Clarkb. and Rudds, and M' Gills, of Kentucky, will dare 



34 INTBODUGTORT ARTICLES. 

accuse them of not holding true allegiance to tlie constitution 
and laws of the country ? 

In conclusion, permit me to submit Vao following propo- 
sitions, on the correctness of which Protestants may fully rely : 

1st. The Roman Catholics of this country owe no civil 
allegiance to the Pope of Eomo. 

2d. The Roman Catholics of this country acknowledge full 
allegiance to the constitution and laws of the United States. 

3d. There is nothing in the Roman Catholic religion inimi- 
cal to the idea of civil and religious liberty, as held by the 
Protestants of this country. 

4th. The Roman Catholics of this country would go as far 
to defend its liberties, from any foe whatever, as the best 
Protestant in the land. 

5th. The Pope, if he had not a foot of ground which he 
might call his own, nor a single political adherent to yield 
him civil homage, would still be Pope, the head of the Catho- 
lic Church on earth, and the spiritual father of two hundred 
millions Catholic Christians, scattered over the whole earth. 

6th. It is impossible for a Roman Catholic, who observes 
with fidelity the precepts of his faith, to be a traitor to his 
countiy. 

7th. The man who impugns my patriotism on account of 
my religious opinions, is either an insane bigot who claims 
my pity, or a foul-mouthed slanderer who has my contempt. 

Yours, ifec, 

A Kentucky Catholic. 



CATHOLICS PROSCRIBING THE LOUISVILLE 
JOURNAL.* 

" Extended and systematic exertions have been made, and are now mak- 
ing, in a hundred qir.irtiTs«, to destroy the circulation of our paper. The 
Roman Catholics in particular, as was to be expected, not satisfied to with- 
draw their own subscription?', are, upon various pretexts, endeavoring to 
persuade all around them t;> do the same. We think they are going beyond 
the bounds of legitimate warfare. Mnny of them seem to sigh, and groan, 
and gnash their teeth, that, in.^toad of mr^rely assailing our name, and our 
political influence, and our pecuniary interests, they cannot bring us to tho 
faggot or the rack. But we an? not in Home, or Spain, or Mexico, and we 
think wc can safely bid d •^^lance, as we do, to Papal tyranny and persecution." 

I CLIP the ahove from the leading editorial in the Louisville 
Journal of Tuesday last, August 14. A more barefaced and 

* Communicated to the Louisvillo Daily Democrat of Augugt 17. 



INTIIODUCTORY ARTICLES. 35 

flagrant outrage upon tiie feelings of a large denomination of 
Christians, and one more opposed to the commonest civilities 
of life, was never penned. From, what quarter does Mr. 
Prentice draw the information that the Roman Catholics of 
Kentucky would, under any circumstances, desire to visit him 
with personal or pecuniary evils ? The new commandment 
given by our blessed Saviour, wherein we are bidden to love 
our enemies y and pray for them that calumniate and persecute 
nSy is of binding force upon the conscience of every true 
Catholic. We are taught to repay evil with good ; and if 
Mr. Prentice himself raises a wall of separation betvv^een us, 
we are assuredly not responsible for the pecuniary evil, if any, 
thereby accruing to him. He says that it ''was to be ex- 
pected'' that Catholics should give up his paper. In this he 
acknowledges, that his course towards that denomination has 
been of such a character as to force its members, even from 
the simple motive of self-respect, to the course indicated. His 
paper has vilified and traduced them, as men and as religion- 
ists ; it has been filled with slanders of their faith, worded in 
most insulting language ; it has attributed to them motives of 
action at war with every feeling of their hearts, and opposed 
to the whole tenor of their lives ; it has raised up a spirit of 
distrust, ill-will, and, in some instances, of positive persecu- 
tion against them, pervading a large portion of the commu- 
nity, and rendering their social existence one of constant fear 
and apprehension. All this it has done, and surely there is 
cause enough for their refusal any longer to receive the paper 
into their houses. By his own acts the editor has prevented 
them from giving him their patronage, unless at the expense 
not only of self-respect, but also of the positive duty which 
they owe to their families, that such reading shall be kept 
from them as it is likely to contaminate their faith or morals. 
But when George D. Prentice charges Roman Catholics 
with a desire to injure him in person or in pocket, he simply 
asserts that which is an unmitigated fable ; and the appeal 
which he makes to his party, based upon the- abominable 
slander, is of such a character — so extremely little and con- 
temptible — that it is hard to believe it had its emanation 
from a sane mind. 

I had hoped that when the fever and excitement consequent 
upon a hotly contested election ha'l passed away, the Louis- 
ville Journars anti-Catholic ebulitions would also cease. I 
iiad hoped that the awful consequences of the late terrible 
riots would have taught the editor, that it is a fearful thing 



36 INTRODUCTOIIY ARTICLES. 

to aid in the spread of dissensions based upon differences of 
religious belief. That sueh has not been the case, I have no 
other feeling than one of profound sorrow. In the continn- 
ance of the course which Mr. Prentice seems to have marked 
out for himself, I can see nothing but evil to the w^hole com- 
munity — Protestant as well as Catholic — both in its social 
relations and in its business affairs. The Imman heart, when 
uninfluenced by passion, is ever longing for peace. Distrust 
of their Catholic fellow-citizens cannot give happiness to 
Protestants ; and the fear of the violence of the mob, and the 
feeling that their patriotism is doubted, and that tlie motives 
of all their actions are misconstrued and misrepresented, must 
have the effect to cause Catholics to seek a more safe and 
quiet home elsewhere. I speak for myself, wdien I say, that 
no inducements of pecuniary advantage w^ould sway me for 
one moment in choosing between a residence in the land of 
my birth, and the consequent evils which attachment to my 
faith would, under such circumstances, render certain, and 
complete expatriation. Roman Catholics ask no immunities, 
other than those which tlie constitution allows to all alike. 
They claim no exclusive privileges. They ask only that they 
be let alone, so long as they obey the laws. 

I have still hopes that the better judgment of Mr. Prentice 
will cause him to cease a warfare which can bring nothing 
but disgrace on the American name, and nnheard of evils 
upon our city. Let him but read again the paragraph at the 
head of this article. He must see how unworthy it is of his 
reputation. We naturally look for such sentiments from the 
mouths of the angel Gabriels of the land ; but God help us 
when they are filched from their insensate and bigoted origi- 
nators, to be used by men of sense and judgment. 
Yours, &c., 

A Kentucky Catholic. 



LETTERS TO GEO. D. PRENTICE, ESQ. 



LETTER FIRST. 

Sir : — In many of your late editorials you refer, in justi- 
fication of the course you liavo thought proper to pursue 
towards Roman Catholics, to what you t.?rru " the political 
aggressions of the papal hierarchy." May I ask of you the 
favor to instance some of these aggressions ? I have been a 
somewhat attentive observer of the actions of the members of 
this same hierarchy in the United Slates, and I am compelled 
to acknowledge that I liave failed to recognize the aggressions 
you speak of. What is their specific character? Being 
'political, as you say, they must consist either in overt acts 
against the constitution and laws, or else treasonable endea- 
vors on the part of the hierarchy tending to the subversion of 
the constitution, and to rendering the laws inoperative. 

Since your residence in Louisviiii?, you have had opportu- 
nities to make the acquaintance of at least four individuals of 
the ''papal hierarchy.'' The first of these w^as the late 
venerable Bishop Flaget, a missionary, when Kentucky w^as 
almost a wilderness — a man wliose whole life Avas an example 
of charity and good-will, and who vv^as esteemed and beloved 
by all who knew him, Protesttints as well as Catholics. Will 
you, Mr. Prentice, have the kindness to indicate when and 
where Bishop Flaget was guilty of political aggressions ! 

And the second, the late Bishop of Charleston, Rt. Rev. I. 
A. Reynolds. He was a native of Kentucky, and for many 
years served the Fifth street congregation in this city. The 
only aggressions to which Dr. Reynolds coald hiive possibly 
plead guilty — and I knew him most intimately — were those 
that he made upon the poverty and destitution which he found 
in the habitations of the poor of his flock. He made w^ar 
upon these with all the energy of his noble heart. 

The third and fourth of this feared hierarchy are the present 
Bishop of Richmond, Ya., Rt. Rev. John M'Gill, and your 
*' friend" Bishop Spalding, of this city. They are both 
natives, and both well known here and elsewhere. Again, will 



88 LETTERS OF A KEI^TUCKY CATHOLIC. 

you, Mr. Prentice, instance the political aggressions of these 
Bishops ? I have every reason to believe that you know them 
well, and as you have charged the American papal hierarchy 
with being political aggressors, it is but fair that you should 
make specifications. If these men are guilty as you charge 
them, you owe it to your own character to prove them so. 
If, however, you find that you cannot substantiate your 
charges against them, as I have perfect confidence you cannot, 
then, in the name of all that is fair and honest, cease abusing 
them. 

I deny — and I challenge the proof to the contrary — that 
the Roman Catholic Bishops of the United States, or the 
Catholic people over, whom they have been placed, have in 
any instance given cause for the charge oi political aggression, 

I deny — and I challenge the proof to the contrary — that 
Roman Catholics are unfriendly to the government and con- 
stitution of the United States. 

I deny — and I challenge the proof to the contrary — that 
there now exists, or ever did exist, on this continent, a body 
of men more thoroughly imbued with deep reverence and love 
for the constitution of the United States than the Roman 
Catholics now living v/ithin i\\Q limits of these States. 

I deny — and I challenge the proof to the contraiy — that 
the Roman Catholic Bishops of the United States, and the 
clergy under theii' jurisdiction, have ever prostituted their 
pulpits to political pui-poses, or that they have used the influ- 
ence, incidental to their offices in the Church, for the furtherance 
of political ends, whether for one party or another. 

I deny — and I challenge the proof to the contrary — that 
in those places in this country where Roman Catholics have 
popular majorities, they have ever endeavored to monopolize 
the offices, or have shown the slightest disposition to be 
aggressive. 

I deny — and I challenge the proof to the contrary — that 
the Roman Catholics of the United States do now hold one- 
tenth part of the offices of tiust and profit which their 
numerical strength fairly entitles them to ; and I affirm, from 
this fact, that they are at least nine times less aggressive upon 
the public purse than are theu' Protestant fellow-citizens. As 
one proof of this, permit me to cite the city of Louisville. 
We have here a population of say seventy thousand souls ; 
of these there are certainly not less than fifteen thousand 
Roman Catholics. I suppose that I will not be far from the 
mark, in estimating the number of persons in the public pay 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOMC. 39 

at one hundred. Among tliem, the only Roman Catholic 
aggressor upon the city treasury, is one young lady teacher of 
the public schools, v/lio was accidentally re-elected by the Board 
of Education — the Know-Nothing majority of that board 
not having been aware of her ** Catholic proclivities/' Here, 
then, in our own city, where a fair representation w^ould entitle 
the Eomiin Catholics to more than one-iiith of the public 
offices, they are officially represented in a ratio as of one to 
one hundred. This is no isolated case. Almost an equal 
disparity of representation will be found from one end of the 
Union to the other. Ivoman Catholics have never complained 
of this. As I have before said, there are but few hunters 
after office among them. How^ then, can you say, as you 
do in your paper of August 25, that Roman Catholics are 
interested in an organization having for its object the distribu- 
tion of the public treasm-e among them — *' peaceably, if 
possible ; forcibly if necessary ? " 

And again, you speak of your party's opposition to the 
'* corrupting influences" of the Catholic Church. This is 
quite a serious charge. If the Catholic Church teaches cor- 
rupt practices to its members, or, what will amount to the 
same, influences them to be corrupt, this corruption must be 
apparent on the whole body of the Catholic people. You 
have had abundant opportunities to test the truth of this 
charge, in reference to those Roman Catholics whom you have 
personally knowm. Now, Mr. Prentice, tell us frankly the 
nature of this corruption, and all about it. Is it in the moral 
order ? If so, give us the instances. Let us know the nature 
and quality of those crimes which the Roman Catholic Church 
teaches to its members. What practical Catholic, or regular 
communicant of that Chm-ch, can you show to be dishonest, 
untruthfid, uncharitable, aggressive, or who, in a word, spurns 
the commandments of God, and refuses obedience to the laws 
of the land ? How much more, as compared with others, 
have you lost through the dishonesty of your Roman Catho- 
lic subscribers to the Journal ? Is this corruption in the social 
order ? If so, it will be easy for you to point it out. Are 
Roman Catholics socially hard-hearted and aggressive ? Have 
you ever knov/n one that refused to keep faith with a Protes- 
tant ? Are they politically corrupt ? When were they so ? 
Have Roman Catholic judges been corrupt in their decisions ? 
Have Roman Catholics refused to pay their taxes, or to march 
in defense of their country when called on ? 

I had always been under the impiession, that the Roman 



40 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

Catliolic Churcli tauglit obedience to the commandments of 
God ; tliat it inculcated tlie virtues of charity and forgiveness 
of injuries ; abnegation of self, and love of the neighbor ; 
purity in thought and action ; justice and obedience to law ; 
truthfulness, honesty and sobriety. Will you say that these 
are corrupt teachings ; I cannot think that you are prepared 
to say so. 

In conclusion, dear sir, permit me to record the hope which 
I entertain, that you w^ll cease this most unjust, illiberal and 
wicked warfare upon the Catholics of this country, because 
they happen to prefer their own way of worshiping God. 

Unless you can prove your charges of ** political aggression ^' 
and '* corrupt practices,'' it is but sheer folly for you to un- 
dertake to give any other reasons, in justification of your 
conduct. There are certainly no motives of public policy 
requiring such a course at your hands. On the contrary, the 
peace of society, and the very existence of all those social 
and kindly feelings vfhich go so far to make life a blessing, 
are placed in jeopardy by these constant efforts to render a 
well-meaning religious body suspected and hated by their 
Protestant fellow-citizens. 

If your object be to enlist the sympathies of the bigoted 
portion of the community in order to pecuniary profit, by 
securing their patronage, then do I much fear that there is 
very little of hope of your ever again becoming the exponent 
of a conservative, wise, and consistent policy. But if, on the 
contrary, you have been led into your present position of open 
and virulent warfare upon your former friends and neighbors 
of the Catholic Church, by the excitement of a political 
contest in which the Catholics Avere opposed to you, causing 
you, in the heat of party strife, to forget the charities of life, 
and to be blinded to the teachings of the constitution, then I, 
and many others of your old friends, may confidently hope 
that with the return of your right reason, will also return the 
consciousness of the wrongs which you have inflicted on the 
Catholic body, and a consequent cessation of those unchari- 
table and unprovoked attacks of which the Louisville Journal 
has lately become the vehicle. 

Yours, &c., 

A Kentucky Catholic. 

Louisville, August 29, 1855. 



\ 

LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 41 

From the Louisville Daily Courier of Septemher 2d, 1855. 

Messrs. Editors : I find tlie following paragraph in tlie 
Louisville Journal of yesterday : 

" To all whom it may concern we have to say that we do not feel under 
the slightest obligation to respond to questions put to us by anonymous 
writers. Let every man who wishes us to talk to him show his face — if ho 
has one fit to show." 

It may possibly be that some one other than your corres- 
pondent has been propounding questions to Mr. Geo. D. 
Prentice, and that I may be altogether wrong in supposing, 
as intended for myself, the above very pleasant and amiable 
reminder of the editor's non-obligations. I am more inclined 
to believe this, as it so happens that the editor himself shortly 
after the appearance of the first article in the Courier over the 
signature of *' A Kentucky Catholic,*' did directly question 
me as to its authorship, and was as directly answered upon 
that point. It is possible, however, that Mr. Prentice not 
only requires a knowledge of the identity of his interrogator 
for himself, but argues also that it is requisite, in order to 
remove the non-obligation on his part to answer troublesome 
questions, that the said interrogator shall show his face to the 
entire newspaper reading population of Louisville. Now I 
respectfully submit to the distinguished editor, that there may 
be other reasons than the one he indicates, why I should 
prefer, so far as the general public is concerned, to remain 
incognito. It should be sufficient for the editor that the face 
of the Courier's correspondent is known to him, and has been 
at any time for nearly twenty-four years. There will be ample 
time to call for the verdict of the public, w^hen Mr. Prentice 
shall have charged that your correspondent's /ace is not ft to 
be shown. 

It is a matter of doubt, however, with me, whether an 
editor is morally justifiable in refusing to answer questions of 
general interest to the community, when submitted in respectful 
language, on the plea that they are anonymously propounded. 
A conscientious editor will always weigh well the circum- 
stances which may or may not render the solution of the 
interrogatories interesting to the community, and act accord- 
ingly. I am, myself, fully convinced that there never was a 
question demanding the exercise of more serious study and 
thought on the part of every true lover of his country, than 
the religious o^e which has unfortunately been foisted into 

4 



42 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

the political arena by, as I think, the designing demagogues 
of party. The question should be — are the Roman Catho- 
lics of this country, including bishops, priests, and laymen, 
chargeable with the crime of treason ? This charge has been 
implied in a hundred different ways by the editor of the Louis- 
ville Journal. If the editor is right, and can prove himself 
so, he has nothing to fear from public opinion, and will de- 
serve the lasting gratitude of all true Americans. If he is 
wrong, he should be thankful for the information that will 
set him aright, even though it come to him through the 
medium of an anonymous letter, or be directly referable to the 
viva voce exposition of his own Irish Roman Catholic kitchen- 
maid, hov/ever unfit her face may be to appear in the circles 
of polite society. 

Yours, &c., 

A Kentucky Catholic. 



LETTER SECOND. 

Sir:— I have read with no little surprise your article of 
September 5th, the purport of whii'li, you kindly say, was 
suggested to you by the letter of a *' Kentucky Catholic." I 
have great objection to using vrhot may be construed into 
disrespectful language in reference to anything emanating 
from the editor of the Louisville Journal, but a proper regard 
for ti-uth will not permit nie to give any other name to the 
entirety of your three column article than absolute nonsense. 
It is Sam Slick, I believe, who tells of a certain versatile 
author, that whenever he wished to write a book, he was in 
the habit of reading up for his subject, and however ignorant 
he might be of the particular topic of which he wished to 
treat, by dint of patching and piecing — stealing a scrap here 
and a scrap there — he was enabled to concoct a very credi- 
table production. Now, it appears to me that you, Mr. 
Prentice, have, for awhile i)ast, been reading up for your 
subject of Popery, and one of the greatest faults I find with 
your performance, arises from the fact, that you have been 
very unfortunate in your selection of authors. '' Dowling on 
Romanism/' ''Dan.^^er in the Dark,'' and such like books, 
are scarcely of that kind which a voiitable historian would 
choose for authorities. I had ceitainly a right to expect, in 



pr 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 4g^ 

case you did me the honor to notice my communication at 
all, something like a candid answer to the queries therein 
propounded. It seems, however, that though you are pecu- 
liarly happy in making sweeping allegations, you have not 
the faculty of individualizing. You had directly charged the 
papal hierarchy with being ''political aggressors.*' The 
charge being unlimited, included, per consequence, each and 
every member of that body, at home and abroad. It had 
reference as well to your ** friend," Bishop Spalding, as to 
Archbishop Hughes — to the Kentucky Bishops of Nashville 
and Richmond, as well as to the French Bishop of Vincennes, 
and the Irish Archbishop of Cincinnati. 

The question being as to whether the papal hierarchy is 
dangerous to our civil well-being as a nation and the perpe- 
tuity of our form of government, it was but natural to sup- 
pose that you were prepared to prove the truth of your 
allegation from the w^ell known acts and acknowledged 
opinions of at least some one member of the hierarchy 
whom you had personally known. It will not do for you 
to say, that you eschew personalities, while you charge a 
whole community with being influenced by treasonable 
intentions. 

But you *' have forborne to say much that might have 
been said about the individual acts of alien Prelates, resident 
among us, having a bearing upon the institutions of this 
country.'' These ''individual acts" are precisely what I 
wish to get at. I will engage, though a simple layman, to 
give you absolution for all the additional sin you may incur 
on account of changing your allegation of political aggression 
from the whole body of the hierarchy to a few individual 
Bishops. First, however, permit me to set you right on one 
point. There are no alien Bishops in the United States. 
One-third of the American Bishops are native-born, and all 
of the foreign-bora Bishops have taken the oath of allegiance. 
They all consequently stand under the constitution, precisely 
as do George D. Prentice and Caleb W. Logan — free 
American citizens. This being settled, I ask you to point 
out the acts of those American Bishops which you speak of 
as "bearing on the institutions of this country." I have 
denied that the American Bishops are justly chargeable with 
being political aggressors, and whenever the contrary allega- 
tion is made in such a shape as to be tangible, I hold myself 
ready to disprove it. 

Inasmuch as your article can, in no sense, be construed into 



4A LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

an answer to the queries put to you through the columns of 
the Courier, it will be scarcely expected of me that I should 
wade through its interminable depths of twaddle and cant, of 
bigotry and folly, for the purpose of answering the baseless 
charges which you bring against the Catholic Church. In- 
deed, it is hardly the province of a layman to engage in the 
defense of the dogmas and practices of the Church, while 
there are so many good and reliable divines, who are both 
able and willing to give the sincere inquirer every information. 
Neither do I believe that the columns of a political paper are 
the most appropriate medium for disquisitions on theological 
subjects. Hence, in all that I have heretofore said, I have 
Btrrctly confined myself to the religioso-political question, 
which not I nor my brethren in the Church are responsible 
for having brought into the arena of party politics. Upon 
those men who have mooted this question, now so clearly 
unwise that it is being dropped as a dead weight upon the 
party in many of the States w^here it had taken strong foot- 
hold, will rest the whole ignominy of its conception. The 
constitution having guaranteed to every man, whether Pres- 
byterian, or Methodist, or Catholic, certain inalienable and 
indefeasible rights respecting the free exercise of his religion, 
those who would wantonly introduce into the political con- 
tests of the country, test qualifications on account of religious 
preferences, are, in my opinion, guilty of a crime not far 
removed from treason. 

I will, nevertheless, endeavor to point out a few of the 
absurdities, not to use a stronger term, into which you have 
fallen. 

1st. You say that the Catholic system is peculiarly ** un- 
congenial to our political latitude.'* So far is ihis from being 
the case, that it has been conceded by many of our wisest 
political men — Protestants mind you — that the members of 
the Roman Catholic Church, ever since the formation of the 
t^overnment, have not only professed a love for the institutions 
of the country, but have shown by their acts an earnest desire 
for their perpetuity. They are exempt from the taint of 
Abolitionism in the North, and of nullification in the South. 

2d. You ignorantly charge the Catholic laity of this 
country with being priest-ridden. Now I will venture to 
assert that there is not a single Protestant sect in the whole 
country, against whom the same charge may not be made, 
with a much greater regard for truth. 

8d. All that you Bay on the subject of Roman Catholic 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 45 

Churcli govemment, is applicable to the Protestant Episcopal 
and Methodist Churches, and in some degree to the Presby- 
terian and other forms of Protestant Church discipline. 

4th. You write as if you thought the Christian religion 
was so Protean-like in its character as to be made adaptable, 
hy changes within itself, for every peculiar form of civil gov- 
ernment. The idea is most absurd. Christ being God, 
could not have possibly founded an imperfect Church. And 
the Church, if it be a true one, cannot possibly change its 
character. Your idea that the Christian Churches of the 
United States should copy their formula of government from 
that of the country, argues, to say the least, a direct squinting 
on your part towards the annexation of Church and State. 
But I allege that Christianity, as taught by the Catholic 
Church, both as to its dogmas and its discipline, is not 
unsuited to any form of civil government, and from the simple 
reason given by the Saviour for the guidance of the Church, 
**My kingdom is not of this world." 

5th. Your idea that ** all Christian graces flow from the 
Pope downiward to the people," is of itself so sublimely 
absurd that it requires no remark from me. 

6th. Y"ou say that ''they (the hierarchy) swear to perse- 
cute and wage w^ar with heretics," (fee. This charge is en- 
tirely gratuitous, and has not a particle of foundation in fact. 
You garble and pervert the reading of the old oath at one 
time taken by the Bishops of the Catholic Church. The 
promise made by the Bishop at his consecration, that he will 
' oppose the spread of error, is made by you to read that he 
will physically exterminate the promoters of error. No such 
meaning can be attached to it. The Catholic Bishop promises 
at his consecration, according to the command of Him who 
sent his apostles to teach all nations, that, in his teaching, 
truth shall be his guide, and as a necessary consequence, he 
is bound to oppose, not by physical force, but by argument 
and the simple power of truth, that which is false. The 
position w^hich the Catholic Bishop here holds is plainly 
incontrovertible, and is in some degree binding on the con- 
sciences of all Christians, without the formula of an oath. 
But the extracts which you give, w4th the exception of the 
one with reference to ''the possessions of the Bishop's table," 
are not foimd in the oath now taken at the consecration of 
the Bishops of the United States and several other countries. 
There have been men before our day who ** sought excuses 
for malice," by perverting the obvious meaning of words ; 



46 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

and in order to remove as far as possible any pretext for sncli 
perversion, the wording of the oath was changed over sixty 

years ago. , v i i 

7th. You say that 'Hhey (the hierarchy) solemnly swear 
not to sell, nor give away, nor otherwise alienate, without 
consent of the Roman Pontiff, the possessions of their table,'' 
and, strangely enough, you argue from this, that Archbishop 
Hughes was influenced by this clause in his opposition to the 
change brought about by the action of the New York L^is- 
lature, in reference to the tenure of church property. This 
section of the oath has nothing to do with church property. 
It was intended, by its insertion into the formula of the oath, 
to prevent any abuse which might arise on account of the 
improper alienation of benefices set apart for the personal sup- 
port of the Bishops, and of which they only had the use 
during the terms of their administration. What wrong is 
done to the Catholic people, or to the government of this 
country, by this clause of the oath ? The President of the 
United States has the use of the White House during the 
term of his office, but he certainly would not be allowed to 
sell or alienate it. 

8th. You speak of the hierarchy tyrannizing over the con- 
sciences of men. What is tyranny ? It is the forcible require- 
ment of an homage neither required by the laws of God nor 
man. In speaking of human law, I, of course, mean law 
founded on justice. No Roman Catholic is thus constrained- 
When I voluntarily conform to certain practices prescribed by 
the Church, I do not recognize that she tyrannizes over me- 
When my judgment has taught me that religious truth is only 
to be found in the Catholic Church, there is no more servitude 
in my obeying her recognized laws than there is in the Pro- 
testant's voluntary homage to the truths of revelation. Man 
naturally feels himself ennobled while he pays homage to the 
truth. The Bishops are represented as self-constituted tyrants, 
and the laity as abject slaves. Now, the plain fact is, that 
the self-same law of obedience to the discipline of the Church, 
is as obligatory on Pius IX as it is on the humble Indian 
Neophite of Kansas. The duty of sacramental confession, 
for instance, governs the one precisely as it does the other. 
The duty of teaching the true Catholic doctrines— those which 
have always been taught and received— is of as binding obli- 
gation on the consciences of the Prelates of the Church, as 
is the duty of hearing and being taught these same doctrines 
on those of the humblest members of the household of faith. 



LETTERS OF A KE2CTUCKY CATHOLIC. 47 

The Eoman Catholic layman reads in the sacred volume, 
Hear the Churchy and he esteems it a privilege to do so. 
Hear the Churchy says the inspired Word — and Priest, and 
Bishop, and Cardinal, and Pope, bow in like humble rever- 
ence and obedience to the divine command. 

9th. I observe, not only in your article of Wednesday, 
but in many others with which you have lately afflicted the 
truth no less than the unbigoted portion of the community, 
a something for which I can find no other name than an 
intense selfishness of Americanism, most inconsistent with 
the generally received idea of Chiistian charity. To be an 
American is a very good thing, and so I esteem it ; but it 
does not necessarily carry with it a hatred of all that is not 
American. Christ did not die alone for Americans. He 
commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and he has 
given us a rule in the case of the '' man who w^ent down from 
Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, '' whereby we 
may distinguish who is our neighbor. Your pharisaical cant, 
judged by this rule, about the ignominy of Eoman Catholics 
** being ruled by a hierarchy of foreign lords," is in exceed- 
ing bad taste. 

10th. *' A Kentucky Catholic*' does *' acknowledge that 
the constitution of Kentucky utters the truth touching the 
natural and indefeasahle rights of mankind." But he does not 
acknowledge that the head of his Church is unceasingly invad- 
ing these natural and indefeasible rights. Almighty God has 
given free will to man. He has j)laced fire and water before 
him, and bade him stretch out his hand and take which he 
will. But he has also commanded him in the new revelation, 
under penalty of eternal reprobation, to believe and he baptized. 
You may as well then say that tlie Bible is unceasingly invad- 
ing the natural and indefeasible rights which the constitution 
of Kentucky allows to the infidel and unbeliever. The 
obedience which the Eoman Catholic pays to the Pope is as 
much voluntaiy as is the obedience v/hich each and every 
Protestant pays to the discipline of his church ; nor is it one 
whit more dangerous to our free institutions. 

11th. You speak of Roman Catholics acknowledging the 
temporal power of the Pope. Now, I defy you, sir, to point 
out one single Roman Catholic Priest or Bishop in the United 
States, that acknov/ledges this temporal power in the head of 
the Church. The late Councils of Bishops in Baltimore and 
in Cincinnati, publicly repudiated this charge. 

12th. You make a comparison between Protestant and 



48 LETTERS OF A IvT:KTUCKY CATnOLlC. 

Catholic countiies veiy iinfavora]»lc to ihe luttcr. In tliis con- 
nection, however, you strinig'cly cnongli forget to mention that 
the only two countries of Chiistendom wliicli do, at this day, 
systematically persecute on account of religious faith, are the 
Protestant countries of Sw^eden and Prussia. In Italy and 
Spain there are no Protestants to persecute. In Catholic 
Belgium, equal in every respect to Protestant Holland, while 
the Catholics number 4,000,000, there are only 8,000 Pro- 
testants, and yet these Catholics voluntarily chose a Protestant 
king, and the government fully recognizes a free press and 
free worship. The Protestants of Catholic Austria are at this 
day, more free, in some respects, than are the Roman Catho- 
lics of the United States. They have their separate free 
schools voluntarily accorded to them. I would like to follow 
you in this comparison of Protestant and Catholic countries, 
and may do so hereafter ; hut this article is now longer than 
I had intended it should be, and I must bring it to a close. 
I will say, however, before concluding, that, being of a very 
hopeful temperament, and knowing that you have capacity to 
learn, and that by some extraordinary grace you may be 
brought to repentance, if the time should ever come that 
you will ask for admission into the Catholic Church, I hereby 
voluntarily offer you my services as sponsor on that interesting 
occasion. 

Yours, very truly, 

A Kentucky Cathouc. 
Louisville y September 8, 1855. 



LETTER THIRD. 

Sir : — I am forced to enter my protest against your man- 
ner of conducting this controversy. The side issues which 
you are constantly bringing up and reiterating with an energy 
which might, under other circumstances, gain for you the 
reputation of the Bomhastes of anti-Catholic ciiisade pole- 
mics, have nothing to do with the matter in question. I 
asked of you to point out the political aggressions with which 
you had charged the American Catholic hierarchy; and you 
answer that "some of them are Jesuits, and all are Jesuitical.'* 
I asked you to name a single Roman Catholic Bishop or 
priest outside of the States of the Church, who will acknow- 



Wi' 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 49 

ledge that he owes civil allegiance to the Pope ; and you 
answer that '* Pope Gregoiy the VII, (he lived eight hundred 
years ago,) commanded that all the princes of the earth 
should kiss his feet/' I should like to see that hull of Pope 
Gregory. I fear me much you have been imposed upon in 
this matter. Your quotations from Archbishop Hughes, and 
from Bishops Flaget and England are vague, evidently 
garbled, and, taken out of the connection in which they were 
originally placed, even meaningless. In order to give the 
readers of the Courier the benefit of your labors, in proof of 
the charges you had brought against the hierarchy, I append 
these extracts : 

Bishop England once wrote to his Irish friends a letter of palpablo 
hostility to the religious liberty of America. Says he : " The people here 
claim and endeavor to assume the same po^^er which the clauses and con- 
ditions would give to the crown amongst you, though not to the samo 
extent. The consequence is that religion is neglected, degraded, despised, 
and insulted with impunity." 

And " My Lord Bishop Flaget," late of Bardstown, Kentucky, in speaking 
by letter to his foreign patrons of the diSiciU-ies encountered by Catholic 
missionaries in converting \^n.Q Indians, refers to " their continual traffics 
among the whites, which (says he) cannot be hindered as long as the rejmb' 
lican government shall subsist." 

And the Most Reverend Irish Archbishop Hughes, of New York, says : 
" That unfortunately the moral attributes of our progressive greatness are 
in the estimation of the civilized nations of the world sinking from day to 
day." — Louisville Journal, Sept. 12th, 1865. 

We have here a truly astounding array of political aggres- 
sions ! But hov/ am 1 to know if these quotations be cor- 
rectly rendered ? You give no date for them, nor the titles of 
the books, or official papers, from which they are taken. You 
leave out the connection in -which they were written, and thus 
possibly distort a meaning from the unconnected sentences, 
not recognized by the authors. However, let us take them 
up, count by count, and see how far they are irresistible. 

First, as to Bishop Ejs gland, we all know that he was a 
man of sense, and incapable of v/riting anything particularly 
absurd. It is therefore liighly improbable that he should 
have written so entirely meaningless a paragraph as that 
which you ascribe to him. Besides, he w^as a pure patriot, 
and as can be proved from a volume of evidence, strongly 
attached to our republican institutions. 

And the saintly Bishop Flaget — the noble old man 
whose voice even now rings in my ears, and brings tears to 
my eyes — he, too, according to tlie editor of the Journal, 
was opposed to our liberties ! It was left for you, sir, to 
discern that which wa§ kept secret from his spiritual children 



50 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

during more than tlie lifetime of a generation, and which, if 
true, would give the lie to a thousand patriotic sentiments 
which he has been heard to utter. Have we not here a 
striking exemplification of old Esop's fable of the dead lion 
and the living ass ? It seems that Bishop Flaget did, at 
one time, complain of the American government's permitting 
the free traffic in spirits with the poor Indians. He found, 
doubtless, as many another missionary has found, that it was 
useless to labor for the reclaiming of his red children, so long 
as this traffic was permitted. It will be remembered that 
Bishop Flaget was a refugee from the persecutions of the 
French revolution. About the year 1792, we find him laboring 
as a missionary ^among the French at Yincennes and the 
neighboring tribes of Indians. The local and military officials 
of the United States, about that time and till after the war of 
1812, were indebted to Bishop Flaget for invaluable assis- 
tance, afterwards gratefully acknowledged, in several of the 
treaties made with the Indians. Doubtless the letter, from 
which you profess to extract, was written in French, and 
afterwards translated into English. Under such circum- 
stances, it is very clearly perceptible that the passage could 
easily have been, and most likely was, mistranslated and 
corrupted. Of one thing you may be perfectly assured, there 
never was a more earnest and sincere advocate of our consti- 
tutional liberties on tlio soil of the Union than was Bishop 
Flaget. 

The extract v/hich you give from Archbishop Hughes has 
no more force to indicate his opposition to our peculiar 
institutions, than it has to prove his adherence to the myste- 
ries of Buddhism. I could point out to you many an old-line 
Whig who has for years battled at your side for what he and 
you then conceived to be the true conservative policy, that 
will agree with the Archbishop in his sentiment of regret that 
the '* moral attributes of our progressive greatness are, in the 
estimation of the civilized world, sinking from day to day.'' 

The sentiment of tlie paragraph which you give from the 
'*Eambler," in reference to religious liberty, taken in the 
sense in which the phrase is generally understood, is false ; 
but if taken in the sense intended by the author, it is incon- 
testably true, 'i'he editor was evidently not speaking of that 
religious liberty which consists in one's being free to profess 
any mode of worship independent of civil restraint. He 
was speaking of tliat liberty of the individual mind to form 
a faith for it^olf, or to discard all faith, and which argues 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CAXnOLIC. 51 

complete unaccountability to God therefor, because of the 
liberty of will with which He has invested it. The same 
may be said with regard to the "■ intolerance of Catholicism." 
If taken in the sense which you evidently intend that your 
readers shall draw from it, it is false. Neither does the 
editor of the ** Rambler/' or any other Eoman Catholic, 
believe it. But if taken in the sense intended by the author, 
and which any logical mind will be able to draw from it, it 
is true. Truth cannot be otherwise than intolerant of that 
quality which is opposed to it. If, for instance, I should 
hold, as incontestably true, that the writer of the article in 
the Journal is a lunatic on the subject of Popery, there would 
be no room in my mind for the tolerance of an opposite 
opinion. The Catholic Church is at once tolerant and in- 
tolerant. She is intolerant — not indeed of the impugners 
of her truth ; not of their social position and civil well-being ; 
not of their liberties, civil or religious ; but she is intolerant 
of those errors which they hold, and which are directly 
opposed to her ever-abiding truth. She is tolerant because 
she holds the truth ; and truth is rooted in love. A Catholic 
cannot possibly entertain hatred against his erring brother. 
The man must still claim his love, though he may not tole- 
rate his error. 

Again, with regard to the bishop's oath, you say, '* It is 
utterly false that the language, or the sense of the oath, only 
binds bishops to oppose the spread of error." Now, I 
again say, that the whole tenor and scope of this part of the 
oath has for its object this and this only. The sense which 
you give to the wording of the oath is not the Catholic sense. 
It is one which you, and other enemies of the church before 
you, have manufactured to suit your purposes. So learned a 
theological amateur as you have proved yourself to be, should 
know that the Catholic Church claims to be ** immutable" 
only in doctrine, and that a change in the wording of the 
bishop's oath could be easily accomplished without damage 
to her immutability. I expressly stated that the old oath 
contained nothing which could in any way compromise the 
civil allegiance of the bishops. My defense was of that oath 
entirely, notwithstanding that the passages, which you object 
to, have been stricken out of the oath as now taken by the 
American bishops. You speak of this oath in connection 
with Archbishop Purcell. Now, I respectfully propose that 
you publish the Archbishop's defense of the oath in the 
Journal, and I will willingly take the verdict of your readers 



52 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

as to its containing obligations at variance with tlie duty of 
civil allegiance. 

Your ideas seem to be extremely vague and uncertain on 
the point of man's inalienable and indefeasible rights. What 
is religious liberty, in the sense in which it is implied in the 
constitution of the United States ? It is the right to believe 
and worship according to conscience, unrestrained by pains 
and penalties from the civil government. The constitution 
entirely ignores the question of the moral right of every one 
to believe as he pleases. It leaves this where it should be left, 
between man and his God. Man is accountable to God for 
his belief and worship, and not to the government. If I 
hold that the Catholic Church is the organ of God's commu- 
nication with the world, I hold that which she teaches as the 
doctrine and command of God, just as the Protestant holds 
that to be the will of God, which is held and taught by his 
particular church. There is, however, this difference. While 
I hold that the medium of my faith is stamped with a divine 
authority, the Protestant acknowledges that the authority by 
which he holds any particular form of faith and worship is 
merely human. It were very easy here to go into the question 
of private interpretation of the scriptures, and to show that, 
though both Protestants and Catholics believe the Bible to be 
the word of God, yet the numberlcvss systems of belief and 
worship professedly taken from it, on the plea of the right of 
private judgment, being only the private opinions of the 
individual readers, can have no claim to be called divine. 

You inquire how comes it that the greater portion of the 
Catholic clergy and people of tliis country are foreigners ? 
This wonderful quandary is of so easy sohition that I am 
only surprised that any man of sense should have entertained 
it. With the exception of that of Maryland, all the old 
colonies of this country w^ere made up of immigrants from 
Protestant States, who were consequently Protestants, as are 
their descendants to this day. The Catholic population has 
been greatly increased of late yeai's by immigration ; in such 
a ratio, indeed, as to naturally require a proportionate number 
of foreign clergymen. As this decreases, so will the relative 
proportion of native and foreign pastois. It is, and always 
has been, one of the first objects of the hierarchy of the United 
States to rear up a body of native priests. This is the uni- 
versal practice of the Church in all countries. In Maryland 
and Kentucky, the greater number of ordinations have been 
of natives. Even of the foreign-born BLshops, most of them, 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 53 

previous to consecration, liacl been residents of the country 
£rom twenty to forty years, and there are few that did not 
receive their clerical training in the United States. You say 
that, **the hierarchy of the United States have a policy of 
their own touching the institutions'' of this country. To be 
sure they have. But this policy is also the policy of every 
true patriot and lover of his country, Protestant and Catholic. 
The happy possessor of the virtues of honesty and truthfulness, 
may and does hold them as his own, but he does not feel 
himself at all the poorer when he sees the familiar faces of his 
own virtues held in like durance by his mortal brother. 

You refer to the encyclical letter of Pope Gregory the XVI, 
in terms not warranted by the tenor of that much abused 
document. During the tenn of his Pontificate, France, a 
portion of Italy, and several of the neighboring states, were 
flooded with a multiplicity of immoral and infidel books. 
The Pope was appealed to by the Bishops whose flocks were 
being contaminated by these trashy and vile publications. 
The encyclical denounces ** that indifferentisni which is falsely 
called liberty," and strongly censures **the licentiousness of 
booksellers (not of the press as you have it,) which induces 
them to publish all kinds of infidel and immoral books." 
The Pope illustrates his meaning by saying : " What man of 
sense will say that we shall allow poisons to be freely used, 
to be sold, and transported from place to place, to be drunk 
even, on the ground that there is an antidote capable of sav- 
ing life if duly taken." 

I have before stated that in Eome and Italy there are no 
resident Protectants. The whole population being Catholic, 
there were no motives of justice to induce Pope Pius IX, 
after his return from exile, to change the ancient law of the 
government in the matter of the religion of the State. The 
Protestant stranger in Rome is entirely unmolested in the 
exercise of his religion. Both English and American Pro- 
testants have their separate places of worship, under the 
protection of the government, and I will venture to say that 
the Catholic citizens of Rome have never, in a single in- 
stance, stoned these edifices, or insulted the worshipers. 
Can you say as much in reference to the resident Catholics 
and their churches in this free and enlightened country ? 

You speak of the hierarchy being a ''close corporation," 
and of their ignoring the *' rights of the laity." Will you 
be kind enough to tell me in how far the laity of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church are allowed to partake iu its govern- 



54 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

mental administration? It seems to be very difficult to 
make you understand that the laws of the Catholic Church 
are of no more binding force upon the h\yman than they are 
on the priest and the Bishop. Tliere are duties, to be sure, 
peculiarly appertaining to each person, according to his 
state of life, and every one is responsible to God for the 
faithful discharge of these duties. The advocate may not, 
without sin, engage in the prosecution of an unjust suit. 
The physician may not wantonly endanger life by experi- 
menting on the constitution of his patient. The editor may 
not impugn the known truth, or endeavor to foist upon any- 
party, or body of men, principles which they solemnly 
repudiate. The priest may not fail to give good example, 
and to spend his life if necessary for the well-being of those 
committed to his charge. The Bishop must guard with 
watchful care the whole flock ; he must *' reprove, admonish, 
and advise " in season, and so let his light shine, that the 
people may glorify God for His good gifts. The constitution 
of the Church was not intended alone for any particular 
form of civil government, but for all. It was framed so as 
to suit the exigencies of all times, of all peoples, and of all 
tongues. That man must be blind indeed who fails to dis- 
cern the wisdom and beauty inherent in the Church. Without 
her headship in the Pope, there could be no unity, and your 
desire for national churches might be gratified — at the ex- 
pense of Christianity itself. 

You tell us that Luther gave to the laity their just rights. 
If you mean by this that Luther emancipated the people from 
the servitude of tyrants, you have read history to very little 
purpose. Wherever Lutheranism exists as the dominant 
religion of any country, there you will find a union of church 
and state, the press enslaved, and to a considerable extent 
actual persecution of non-conformists. I refer you to Prussia, 
Denmark, and Sweden. On the contrary, it is perfectly 
demonstratable, that in all Catholic countries, where there is 
any considerable minority of Protestants, there you will find 
free worship, a free press, and Protestants having access to 
the highest offices. I refer you for this to France, Austria, 
Bavaria, Hungary, and Belgium. 

A word with regard to what you say of the great Pope 
Gregory VII. Much has been ignorantly written and spoken 
of this Pope. But Protestant historians liave appreciated the 
glory of his character. They acknowledge that he was equal 
to the task which Providence had placed before him ; that he 



LETTERS Oi' A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 55 

** saved EarojDS froni baibarism/* and what is more beautiful 
still, that *'he irmstrateJ Christianity by his virtues." The 
last words on his lips \v:^rd: *' And i, too, have loved justice 
and hated iniquity, and I die in exile." The German Pro- 
testant historian, M. Toigt, says of him : '' It is difficult to 
bestow upon him exagi^^orated eulogy ; for he has laid every- 
where the foundation of a solid glory. But every one should 
endeavor to render justice to whom justice is due; let no one 
cast a stone at one so innocent ; let every one respect and 
honor a man who has labored for his age, with views so 
grand and so generous. Let him who is conscious of having 
calumniated him, re-enter into his own conscience." 

You speak of *^ Catholic monasteries and other penitentia- 
ries, in which voluntary convicts are confined and tortured." 
This whole sentence is replete with contradictions and 
absurdities. It is a principle of common law, that every 
man shall be allowed to follow that avocation, or manner of 
life, which best suits him, care being taken that he shall not 
therein interfere v/ith the rights and privileges of others. 
Now I take it, if I choose to enter into a monasteiy, I seek 
my individual happiness^n doing so ; and no man of mode- 
rate capacity, hoAvever he may wonder at my mode of seeking 
happiness, can aver that in following the bent of my inclina- 
tions I have not acted precisely as he would, were our positions 
reversed. Voluntary convicts, indeed 1 Let me tell you, sir, 
that some of the happiest people in the state of Kentucky are 
occupants of these same p€nite7itlaries, as you sneeringly call 
them. They earn by the labor of their hands that which 
they eat and wear, and they have withal something for the 
poor and the stranger, in addition to prayers from clean 
hearts. Wherein are you better off? But the monks of 
La Trappe actually " shave their heads, and bury their dead 
with their faces downward." This, I suppose, you will call 
T3Lnk political aggression ! Well, if I must accede something 
to you, I suppose this item of Trappist treason will suit as 
well as anything else. 

You are extremely fond of using such phrases as '' drunk 
with the blood of the saints," **a despotic altar," '*our lord, 
the Pope," '* the hierarchy claim to have an exclusive monopoly 
of grace and trutli," (fee, &c. Nov\^ all this I may very 
justly call cant. It is not intended for men of judgment, but 
for ** the groundlings." When I read it, I cannot help 
imagining that I see before me an ignorant popery -mad 
buffoon, or a tattered martyrdom -hunting street lecturer. 



56 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

Rid yourself, my dear sir, of all such superfluous liaLiliments. 
Your editorial figure is not overly prepossessing at best. 
Why add to the blunders incidental to au ill-regulated edu- 
cation these shapeless rags of bigotry ? 

In the opening paragraph of your article of Wednesday 
last, you seem to imply that you have a doubt about my 
being either a Kentuckian or a layman. Indeed, it has been 
intimated to me as a somewhat general opinion among those 
of your no-popery party who have taken tlie ti'ouble to think 
of the matter at all — it is a lamentable fact tliat few of them 
are much overgiven to thinking upon any subject — that the 
correspondent of the Courier is none other than a certain 
dignitary of the Catholic Church, who is therein seeking to 
hide his individual fesponsibility under the cover of a very 
contemptible device. Now I wish it distinctjy understood, 
that the writer of the articles signed *'A Kentucky Catholic," 
is both a Kentuckian and a lioman Catholic layman ; and 
that, having himself written every line and syllable in each 
and every one of the aforesaid articles, and that too, without 
the assistance or dictation of any other, clergyman or layman, 
he has no intention of allowing any Ae to assume his respon- 
sibilities, or to be held publicly or privately responsible for 
the statements, language, tone, and temper of said articles. 
If they contain errors of induction or fact, he alone is respon- 
sible for them. Should there be any one sufiiciently curious 
to wish to know the real name of *' A Kentucky Catholic," 
let him apply to the editors of the Courier y who are hereby 
authorized to give the desired information. 

In conclusion, allow me to repeat the questions previously 
asked, and v/hich, up to this time, you have completely 
ignored : 

When were the Eoman Catholic Bishops of the United 
States, or any one of them, guilty of political aggression ? 

Can you point out a single Eoman Catholic Bishop or 
priest in the United States who does acknowledge, or who 
lias acknov/ledged, that he owes civil allegiance to the Pope? 

What are the corrupt practices inculcated by the Catholic 
Church ? 

Yours, ifec, 

A Kentucky Catholic. 

Louis villey Sept. 1PM, 1855. 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 57 



LETTER FOURTH. 

"Words, words, words filled with 

Sound and fury, signifying nothing/' 

Sir : I liave never been more impressed with the aptitude 
of the above trite quotation, than in reading your reply to 
my hist letter as it appears in your Journal of the 22d inst. 
I have looked in vain through the closely printed columns for 
an answer to my inquiries regarding the ** aggressions of the 
Papal hierarchy" of the United States, the ** coiTU23ting 
influences of the Catholic church, '^ and the acknowledgment 
of civil fealty on the part of the American Bishops to the 
Pope of Ivome. 

My dissatisfaction as to your manner of conducting what 
you call the *' Papal controversy," was the natural result of 
J oxn not sticking to tlie point. A logical reasoner, in laying 
down a proposition, does not leave it till he has proved both 
his premises and their consequences. You laid dow^n the 
proposition that the hierarchy of the United States hold civil 
allegiance to a foreign potentate. The Bishops themselves 
solemnly deny it, and you have the efirontery to say, that you, 
]jar excellence, know more about what the Bishops believe 
than they do themselves. 

I am not at all disposed to follow you in your eifoiis to 
escape from the main issue. Stick to your text. Give us the 
instances of political aggression which you have charged on 
the Bishops. Designate the kind and quality of those crimes 
which tlie Catholic Church inculcates on her members. Give 
us the name of one single individual of the American liier- 
archy wdio does acknowledge, or who has acknowledged, that 
he owes civil allegiance to the Pope. To all your charges 
against the church, '*cut and dried" for the use of the anti- 
Popei y lecturers, and unsubstantiated! by a particle of evidence, 
or even of reference, I ansv\'or, nego iotum — I deny the whole. 
To use your own language, if you** wish to talk to me*' 
about side issues, having nothing to do with the matters in 
controvers}', you must " shovr me the face " of your authority. 
I ask for the page and autho]*, chapter and verse, and until 
these are given, 1 do not hoh.i that 1 am •' under any obliga- 
tion" to do more than throw in your teeth that clincher to all 
argument based on unsubstaniialed assertion — xego totum ! 

You say that you have not enlarged on the private opinions 
of men, and yet tho private opinions of men are made the 



58 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

"basis of almost cvoiy cliarge you hrhig againsl: the Churcli. 
If you really wish to understand what is Catholic doctrine, 
get the Catechism of tlio Council of Trent and read it. What 
if it be true that in past ages there have been found some 
Catliolic theologians who did favor a course which would, in 
our day, be designated a persecuting one. Did not Calvin 
favor a similar course, and carry it out to the letter, when he 
had Servetus burnt at tlie stake ? Did not the head of Eng- 
lish Protestantism, who murdered wives with as little remorse 
as he would have strangled kittens, akso murder, embowel, 
and burn Catholics, precisely because tliey were Catholics ? 
Did not the reformers of Germany not oidy persecute Catho- 
lics, but pursue a similar course towards their Protestant non- 
conformist brethren ? Where will you find a better example 
of persecution for conscience sake than was exhibited in the 
religious warfare between the Covenanters of Scotland and 
their Protestant brethren of the English Church ? How was 
Protestantism itself propagated in England and Germany ? 
Not certainly by persevering argument and the simple power 
of truth. Stronger arguments than these were necessary to 
pervert whole nations from their ancient faith. The **arm of 
the flesh '' was invoked, and the power of the civil magistracy; 
and those who refused to tui-n traitors to their God were either 
slaughtered or transported from the land. Did you ever hap- 
pen to hear of the dispersion of the Catholic Acadians from 
their homes in Canada by the Protestant Government of 
England in the last century ? There are men even now living 
who were born before this act of wholesale persecution was 
perpetrated. And if we come to our own country, who have 
been the persecutors here ? Assuredly not the Eoman Catho- 
lics. They have not burnt witches, or hung Quakers. They 
have not enacted ''blue laws" for the punishment of non- 
conformists. On the contrary, when the unfortunate object 
of Protestant persecution knocked at their doors, in obedience 
to the divine command, they took the stranger to their bosoms 
and administered to his wants. And even now, now in our 
own day, in the full blaze of the advanced civilization of the 
nineteenth century, in our own land, too, whose freedom and 
conse:[iient greatness is attributable alike to the patriotism of 
OTU' common ancestry, Protestant and Catholic, assisted by 
the blood and treasuie of a Catholic ally, who is it that is 
endeavoring to rear the standar<l of persecution, and destroy 
the liberty and privileges of one portion of the citizens of 
the Union ? Is this the work of Roman Catholics ? You 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 59 

know tliat it is not. I will not even insult the sense of my 
separated brethren by calling it a Protestant work, except so 
far as Protestants, as such, have been inveigled into assisting 
in the selfish schemes of a set of miserable demagogues, 
nominally Protestant and scarcely Christian. It is you, sir, 
and such as you, who are laboring for this end. It is you, 
sir, and such as you, who, with canting hypocrisy, are sound- 
ing the alarm of danger to ihe republic, because Eoman 
Catholics are here allowed, alike with the Protestant and the 
Jew, and under the shield of the constitutional compact, freely 
to live and freely to worship ! 

It is useless for me to endeavor to set you right, while yon 
are pre-determined to hold on to your errors. The man who 
willfully misrepresents the meaning of another is guilty of a 
species of fraud, which, in my Catholic simplicity, looks very 
like forgery. You thus misrepresent the whole context of 
my remarks upon the passage from the '' Rambler." And 
if you will so misrepresent my explanation of that passage, 
what am I to expect better from you when you profess to 
extract from Roman Catholic theological works ? But not 
only are you guilty of fraud in reference to this, but you 
actually endeavor to palm off another fi-aud on your own 
readers. The extract given in your former article was 
scarcely six lines in length, and embodied two simple propo- 
sitions, which I endeavored to explain, and which, I have 
had the assurance of sound Protestant reasoners, I did satis- 
factorily explain. Your present extract is more than three 
times as long, and contains ether and different propositions. 
Yet you labor to make your readers believe that I had 
acknowledged the propositions of this last extract as ** incon- 
testably true." Is not this a fraud? Again, though I did 
acknowledge the correctness of the two propositions of your 
first extract, when taken in the sense endeavored to be con- 
veyed by the editor of the '* Rambler," and which sense I 
clearly explained, yet I acknowledged the same propositions 
to be false when taken in a different sense. You clearly 
endeavor to make your readers believe that I acknowledged 
as true that which I did pronounce false. But this fraud of 
yours may be of service, in teaching honest men to place very 
little reliance on the candor of anti-Popery writers, and also 
in the reliability of their quotations. 

Your citation concerning the books of the Index, exhibits the 
fact that your want of candor is only equaled by your igno- 
rance of yom* subject. The Holy Scriptures are held in fully 



60 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOUC. 

as mncli reverence by Catholics as tliey are l>y Protestants, 
and even in greater reverence, for they deem them so sacred, 
as to be very cautious how they wrest them "to their own 
destruction.'' The Bible is found in almost eveiy Catholic 
family, and is freely read, though not freely intei'preted. Since 
the year 1800, four Catholic booksellers in Ireland, have 
issued nearly 300,000 copies of the Bible. In the United 
States there have been many editions printed, and copies are 
of easy access to every one. 

The laws of the Catholic Church are intended for the 
guidance of her own children. Those outside of the pale of 
her authority have nothing to do with them. So long, 
therefore, as her laws do not interfere w^ith the natural or 
vested rights of those 'outside, and they never can so interfere 
with them, I consider it a piece of unprovoked impertinence 
for you, or any other diss.enter from her authority, to dictate 
changes in her discipline, and quarrel with her members 
because they choose to accept her discipline without change. 
Would you not think it strange of me, a Eonian Catholic, 
if I were to suggest to the Synod of the Presbyterian Church 
sundry changes in her ritual, mode of worship, and manner 
of vesting church property ? You would clearly consider me 
a madman w^ere I to do so. And yet you, and the thousands 
like you, who have volunteered to reform the Catholic Church, 
are doing all this. You virtually say to the Catholic Church, 
you have no right to prevent your members from reading 
infidel and immoral books — this is a restriction of their 
indefeasible rights. "^ * You have no right to have a 
hierarchy at all ; laymen can govern the church without such 
a system. * * * Your Bishops have no right to prefix 
a cross to their signatures ; they should ** afiix their signatures, 
like the plain people of America.'' Reverse the case, and 
suppose it is the Methodist or Protestant Episcopal Church 
which is thus insolently spoken to by Eoman Catholics, and 
what would be the answer ? My Kentucky education would 
indicate the proper one at a moment's warning. It would be 
an indignant injunction for such impertinent meddlers to 
mind their own business! If such a declaration would be 
right from a Protestant to a Catholic, would it not be equally 
correct, under similar circumstances, from a Catholic to a 
Protestant ? Unquestionably it would. We ask not for 
your sympathy on account of what yon are pleased to call 
our enslaved condition. Our chains are self-imposed. Thoy 
are light, and we bend not under them. They are magnetized. 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 61 

as it were, by electric fl^islies from heaven itself, and they 
give us strength to " walk erect as in the day." We ask not 
for your advice as to how we shall worship. We have a 
better rule than you can give us. We ask you not to take 
charge of our ecclesiastical affairs and our church property. 
Mind your own business! Tiiis is the axiom of common 
sense — rough and unpolished, yet pure gold ; American in 
its aptitude, and true as is the great American heart to its 
love of liberty. Mind your own business, and let us alone ! 
We interfere not in the regulation of your systems of church 
government. We meddle not with your synods, nor your 
convocations, nor your general assemblies ! Let us alone ! 
and, at the same time, let alone the federal constitution by 
which our rights are guaranteed. 

The contempt which you promise us unless we shall consent 
to receive your pity, is a very harmless article. We can 
manage to get along without feeling at all inconvenienced, 
from it. We only ask you to be careful that the feeling does 
not breed in you a more aggressive kind of passion, which 
may impel you to take upon yourselves the prerogative of 
Almighty God, and punish by physical pains the objects of 
your contempt. The transition is singularly easy, and since 
the advent of Know-Nothingism, something more than indi- 
cations of it have been abundant in the land. 

You have much greater cause to fear on account of the 
possibility of such a result, than have the Eoman Catholics ; 
for though you may burn our churches, mangle and imprison 
our bodies, and fetter the freedom of our religious worship, 
yon cannot put chains on the immortal soul. This will still 
be free, and from the very ashes of our bodies will spring the 
hosts to take our places. But you, who in the pride of your 
human wisdom thank God *'that you are not like the rest of 
men,'* in doing these things, v/ill be able to congratulate 
yourselves on having given the fatal blow to the freedom of 
our country, and at the same time to those qualities of ita 
freedom in which you take most pride, its advancement in 
wealth and commercial prosperity. 

Your reference to the act of the Continental Congress of 
1774, is a very unfortunate one. This veiy act lost to us 
Canada, and the assistance of her people in imr struggle for 
independence. For, when the delegation appointed to confer 
with the people of Canada in regard to the propriety of join- 
ing forces with us, and which delegation consisted of Rev. 
John Carroll, afterwards Archbishop of Baltimore, Chase 



62 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

and Franklin, did urge this policy upon the Canadians, they 
justified their refusal by pointing to this very act. Charles 
Carroll, though the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of 
Independence, represented the only Catholic colony then in 
the country, and jeopardized thereby more than any ten 
individuals that did sign that document. 

If you suppose you have answered my queries, even to the 
satisfaction of any non-Catholic reasoner of moderate capaci- 
ties, you vi^ere never more mistaken in your life. First, you 
reason from premises which are false, and which we do not 
acknowledge, and therefore your conclusions are likewise 
false. We hold no civil allegiance to a foreign potentate. 
Secondly, the Catholic people are before and all around you, 
and if they are more 'corrupt, than others, it needs no refer- 
ence from you to Catholic treatises on moral theology, printed 
in a dead language, and for the guidance of the priesthood, 
to prove them so. The fact will be self-evident, if your 
charge is true. That it is basely false, will be the judgment 
of every right-hearted man that has ever lived in a Catholic 
community. Thirdly, ''aggressions'' are always tangible. 
They can be seen and felt; and it will not do for you to 
reason from your abstract ideas of what you conceive the 
Church to be, of what ought to be her policy. You had 
charged the American Bishops witli being political aggressors ; 
and when asked for the proof, you throw yourself upon your 
reserved rights, and declare that men who hold to certain 
principles, which you manufacture out of whole cloth for 
them, if they are not aggressive, ought to he so. 

The theological compaitnient of your brain is in a state of 
wretched confusion. Notwithstanding, you have endeavored 
to enlighten me, and the rest of mankind, on the subject of 
man's ** inalienable and indefeasible rights," I cannot possibly 
get at your meaning, and am strongly impressed with the 
idea that you yourself do not precisely know what yon 
believe on the subject. From your last explanation, I am 
led to the conclusion, that you believe that man has an inde- 
feasible right to refuse to obey the command of God. Is 
this so ? 

There is one fact connected with the Knovv'-Nothing crusade 
against the Catholic Church, which is certainly worthy of the 
attention of every lover of justice, it has been over and over 
again stated, that the lloman Catholics of this country are, 
and have always been, in reference to the elective franchise, 
the subservient tools of the priesthood ; that the clergy have 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATnOLIC. 63 

only to indicate for whom they shall vote, and all individual 
preferences are at once lost sight of, in order that the whole 
Catholic hody may show^ an undivided front in favor of those 
men and measures previously selected for their suffrages hy 
the heads of the Church. A more wicked libel than this has 
never been promulgated on any body of men. There is not 
even the semblance of truth in it. It is known to you, that 
my political affinities have ahvays been towards the Whig 
party, as have also been those of a large majority of the 
Roman Catholics of Kentucky. The foreign element of the 
Catholic population — and the same may be said of tliat of 
every Protestant denomination, the Protestant Epirscopal 
Church, perhaps, excepted — is as w^ell known to you to be 
Democratic in its tendencies. If the Catholic clergy have 
used the supposed influence, appertaining to them as spiritual 
guides, to induce the Catholic people to vote in any particular 
way, how do you account for this diversity of political predi- 
lection between the two classes of native and foreign born 
Catholics ? 

But I will still go further, and record it here, as my delib- 
erate opinion, based upon observation and intimate personal 
relations with a great many Catholic clergymen, both native 
and of foreign birth, that a considerable majority even of the 
latter class, have heretofore favored the principles of the old 
Whig party. They have not done this, to be sure, by endea- 
voring to influence their people to vote in accordance with 
their own private individual sentiments. This was no pait 
of their duty as ambassadors for Christ. And had they done 
so, though you and your party might not have then thought 
proper to bring this charge against them, of undue interfer- 
ence in matters not directly appertaining to their calling, the 
opposition party doubtless would have so charged them. 
Thus, the inference is perfectly plain, that the Catholic priest- 
hood are to be held accountable for a course of conduct, 
which, had they truly followed, as has been charged against 
them, w^ould have saved them from all blame, so far, at least, 
as you and your party are concerned. 

The Eoman Catholics, am^ong all the religious bodies of 
this country, are the least chargeable wath being attracted by 
the divers isms of the day, whether they be of a religious or 
a political character. Mormonism, and Millerism, and Four- 
ierism count no Eoman Catholics in their ranks. The}' are 
equally free from Abolitionism, Freesoilism, and Fillibuster- 
ism. Always conservative, they are calm and fair in their 



64 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

opposition to what tlicy deem cn-or in politics and religion. 
Tiiey never sull'er their preferences to lead tUem beyond the 
pale of social courtesy, or to render them regardless of the 
duties imposed by heaven-born charity. Intolerant, if you 
please, of the principle of Protestantism, they recognize the 
tmiversal law of the Church and its P^'ounder, to know no 
man's religion when it is a question of the relief of distress, 
or of the general good. 

If there be any man so credulous as to believe that the 
leaders of the Know-Nothing party, in appending to their 
political creed this element of political proscription on account 
of religious faith, were actuated by motives of true patriotism, 
and really feared for the safety of our peculiar institutions, 
because of principle's supposed to be held by Roman Catho- 
lics dangerous to the same, he is greatly mistaken. They 
had no fear of the kind, and you have no such fear. They, 
unfortunately, found in the minds of great numbers of Pro- 
testants and nominal Protestants, an intense prejudice against 
the Catholic Church. This prejudice had been suffered to run 
riot in places where a Roman Catholic w^as never seen, and 
was daily added to by the circulation among the illiterate of 
gross and lying publications, concocted for profit by men who 
knew no more of Catholic usages than they did of decency, 
and which presented to the unwary eyes of our youth a tissue 
of baseless charges against Catholicity, intermixed with beastly 
and obscene incidents. Knowing the existence of this w^ide- 
spread spirit of fanaticism, and believing that they could turn 
it to political advantage, by enlisting against the old Demo- 
cratic party a greater number of its then adherents than they 
would lose thereby of Catholic Whig votes, the Know- 
Nothing leaders tackled to their clumsy craft, launched at 
midnight on the muddy waters of civil discord and sec- 
tional strife, this rotten plank of Catholic proscription. 
The Democrats must be beaten at any cost. What matters 
it, if it be necessary in order to do so, that the constitution 
shall be trampled under foot, and the demon of religious 
bigotry let loose in the land to destroy all the tlowers of social 
happiness ! The plunder must be obtained, said they, and 
we will make use of this feeling of hostility to Catholics, in 
order to humbug the ignoiaut and bigoted of the Democratic 
party into assisting us in our schemes. The conservative 
policy of Clay and Webster was lost sight of in the determi- 
nation to appropriate the offices of government. Many of 
the preachers were ii)<luco i to enlist in tiie cause. The pulpit 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. G5 

was cliiinged into a rostrum for political liarangues, and a 
number of tliese misguided men were even seen to join with 
secret, oath-bound plotters, to impose upon our beloved 
country, a policy positivly subversive of all liberty, civil and 
religious. But by the- mercy of an overruling Providence, 
the cunning of all concerned has overreached itself. The 
degraded leaders, panderers as they were to the worst passion 
of the human heart, and that, too, for base and selfish ends, 
reckoned not on that inherent love of justice, which is still, 
thank God, the chief glory of a vast majority of the Ameri- 
can people. They reckoned not on the intelligence and patriot- 
ism of those true men of the old Whig party, who scorned 
the slavery of their oath-bound faction, and whose fidelity to 
the teachings of the constitution was not to be purchased. 
The preachers, too, who possibly thought they were doing God 
a service in forsaking the Gospel of peace, in order to convert 
the Catholics from the errors of their w^ays, by inculcating a 
system of civil disabilities not recognized by the gospel — 
they, too, have overreached themselves. In every town and 
village throughout the country — even in those where the 
face of a Eoman Catholic never was seen, there have been 
raised up from the ranks of both the old political parties, 
apologists for the Church, and defenders of the patriotism of 
her American members. Even from the body of the 
preachers themselves, have come most withering rebukes 
of the spirit of fanaticism that had unfortunately fastened 
itself on the minds of so many of the brethren. All honor 
to these conscientious preachers and true Americans ! My 
faith has no afi&nity with their religious opinions ; but of 
the honesty of their convictions I have no doubt. They 
have shown themselves the uncompromising advocates of that 
conservatism which I once thought the peculiar attribute of 
the Whig organization. They have read aright the page on 
which is inscribed the charter of our constitutional liberties. 
Not only this, but they have read aright that higher page of 
God's law, which inculcates the duty of charity, and forbids 
the assumption by man of His eternal attributes. And not 
only this, but they have read aright that page of the book of 
common sense, which teaches as the experience of all time, 
that religious faith, or even preconceived opinions on matters 
of less importance, can never be uprooted from the mind, by 
political disabilities on account of such faith, or of such 
opinions. I am glad to believe that mnny of the preachers 
who had been induced, from, perhaps, a natural feeling of 



66 LETTERS OF A KEKTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

opposition to what tliey esteemed error in tlie religion of the 
Eoman Catholics, to make common brotherhood of political 
mountebanks and tricksters in Know-Nothing lodges, becom- 
ing aware of the false position they had assumed, have severed 
all connection with the party. Let them still withdraw from 
the disgraceful association, and every man with them who has 
a soul to feel for the honor of his country. Let them do but 
this, and while peace and good- will shall resume the places 
usurped by discord and fanaticism, the very name of the politi- 
cal monster whom they served, will soon become a myth in the 
land which he had hoped to govern, and, in governing, to ruin. 
You may perhaps say, that now, at least, the Roman 
Catholics of this country do show an undivided front in 
opposition to what 'you mis-name the American party. You 
may even charge this result to the influence of the priesthood, 
though the compliment would be a poor one, both to the 
feeling of self-respect in the hearts of the Catholic people, 
and to the judgment of the clergy in supposing the exercise 
of such influence on their part at all necessary. It would be 
v/onderful indeed, if the Catholics were not, to a man, ranked 
among the opponents of the Know-Nothing faction. This is 
the faction that has falsely charged them with holding alle- 
giance not compatible with that which they owe to the 
constitution of their country. This is the faction that is 
seeking to degrade them socially and politically. This is the 
faction that has slandered them in their religious faith and 
practice, and which bears on its banners the open declaration 
of** war to the hilt'' against them. This is the faction that 
has already caused the shedding of innocent Catholic blood, 
and desecrated houses erected in honor of the living God. 
Finally, this is the faction whose adherents seem to have 
been permitted in our day to prove themselves worthy of the 
brotherhood of Shylock, and to be able to say with their 
anti-Christian prototype : 

" I hate him, for he is a " Catholic. 

Let all men be careful how they enter this Know-Nothing 
school of hatred. The beneficent God never intended that 
his childi-en should permit the seed of this baneful passion to 
be implanted in their hearts ; much less that it should bud 
and bloom there, and produce its natural fruits of strife and 
bloodshed. ** Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." 

Yours, (fee, 

A Kentucky Catholic. 
LoriuvUley Septsmbcr 26, 1855. 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 67 



LETTER FIFTH. 

Sir : — 1 have now before me your four articles on '* The 
Papal Controversy." They look alike, and they read alike. 
Take from each the matter of a hundred lines, and they 
would be all substantially alike. In all are found the same 
ad captandum charges, unsupported by any reliable evidence 
or reference ; the same denunciations of Catholic practices, 
which you neither understand, nor care to understand ; the 
same evidences of your un-Christian self-righteousness, and 
your contempt of others ; the same anti- Catholic bigotry and 
anti-republican short-sightedness. 

It is clearly impossible for any one to make headway in a 
discussion so conducted. I have called for proofs, and am 
met by mere assertions. Bare assertion, according to all the 
rules of logic, calls only for bare negation. If you are not 
satisfied with my nego toturn, in the name of reason and 
common sense, bring out your proofs, and in such a garb, 
and with such distinct references to original documents, 
chapter and page, that I may have the opportunity to ex- 
amine for myself. When I assure you that one-half of what 
you assert against Catholic belief and practice is absolutely 
false, and that the remainder is a miserably garbled and 
twisted perversion of facts, I say what I am able and willing to 
prove, whenever you shall give me the opportunity to do so. 

Your last article, as well as the three which have preceded 
it, contains no proof to support the charge brought against 
the American hierarchy of ** political aggression;" nothing 
to show a want of sympathy for our civil institutions on the 
part of the Roman Catholics of the United States ; nothing to 
indicate to a reasoria])le man that Roman Catholics are not 
as good citizens and as true republicans as the best Know- 
Nothings in the land. 

The olla podridda dish of anti-Catholic invectives, which 
you have weekly set before me, begins to assume ** an ancient 
and fish-like " appearance, not at all provocative of appetite. 
Were it not for the slightly peppery condiments which you 
have been kind enough to intermix with your usual ingredi- 
ents, in this your last efibrt at intellectual no-popery cookery, 
I should be compelled to forego any attempt upon it at all. 

First, in order to set your mind at rest upon a question 
which seems to trouble you not a little, permit me to sav 



68 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

again, as I have said before, that the letters of ** A Kentucky 
Catholic '* were not written for the purpose of defending 
Catholic doctrines. The dogmas of the Church need no 
defense from me. Though I may be both willing and able 
to give **a reason for the faith that is in me'' to any one 
who will courteously ask it, yet I fully concur in the views 
of most Catholic theologians, that public discussions on 
doctrinal points, should, as a general thing, be left to those 
who have made such matters the study of their lives. No 
intelligent man can gainsay the reasonableness of such a 
conclusion. You say that it is anti-republican. I deny that 
it is so. Common sense has more to do with it. Theology, 
like physic and law, is a science requiring years of study 
properly to imderstcTnd and be able to expound. There are 
certainly good Christians and firm believers in the very 
lowest walks of life, for the gift of faith is for all who will 
ask with the proper dispositions ; yet, you will not be pre- 
pared to say, that such are equal to the task of convincing the 
educated unbeliever and casuist. Judges, as w^ell as writers 
and lecturers on civil law, are expected to be learned in the 
science ; and the same may be said of medical practitioners 
and lecturers. Is the science of religion, of the covenant 
between God and his creatures, of less importance than those 
sciences relating only to man's civil and personal well-being ? 
Assuredly not. I grant you that it is frequently the case that 
the earnest faith and good example of even the most unlettered 
persons, have the effect to convert men far removed from them 
in learning and knowledge. But in the great battle between 
faith and unbelief, there is a necessity that the teacher, **sent 
of God," should be learned in the science of God, in order 
that he may be able to reason logically and clearly from the 
premises laid down in the Divine Law. 

Your idea that the restriction imposed upon the layman, 
in forbidding him to engage in public discussions upon points 
of doctrine, unless by permission of his ordinary, is ** anti- 
republican," is simply an absurdity. I have the privilege to 
accept or reject the teachings of the Catholic Church or any 
other church. It is to be presumed that when I do attach 
myself to any particular church, it is upon the principle that 
what that church teaches is in accordance with my views of 
divine truth. 1 may not impugn one of her laws, and still 
consider myself a consistent member of her communion. In 
resigning my will to tlic captivity of faith, whatever I as- 
snme, is assumed voluntarily, and with my eyes open. It is 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 69 

just as anti-republican in llie Baptist Churcli to require the 
submission of the will of the new convert to the act of immer- 
' sion, as it is in the Catholic Church to require the obedience 
of her members to w^hatever her discipline requiies. Repub- 
licanism has nothing to do with one or the other. 

As to my own particular case, no one is more fully aware 
than yourself, that the questions I have proposed to discuss 
are entirely unconnected with the dogmas of the Catholic 
Church. For instance, it is no doctrine of the Catholic 
Church that her Bishops shall be ''political aggressors.'* It 
is no doctrine of hers that '• faith is not to be kept with here- 
tics." It is no doctrine of hers that the Catholics of this 
country '' owe civil allegiance to the Pope." It is no doc- 
trine of hers that Protestants shall be ''cursed" by every 
priest in the United States, either " privately " or publicly, on 
"Holy Thursday," or any other day. It is no doctrine of 
hers that a simple layman may not, without the previous 
consent of his Bishop, stand up in defense of the civil rights 
of himself and his brethren, whenever these rights are as- 
sailed from any quarter whatever. Finally, it is no doctrine 
of hers that such a layman shall refrain from calling things 
by their right names, even at the risk of offending the delicate 
nervous organization of a Know-Nothing editor. 

Having never Cjuestionea *'the Bishop of this diocese" as 
to wdiether or not he would "indorse" what you term my 
"insulting expressions" inrefeience to Know-Nothingism, I 
am unable to give you the infoiniation you require on this 
point. Since the appearance of your last article, however, 
I have consulted several good old-line Yv^higs and Democrats, 
all sound Protestants, wiio have offered to make affidavit that 
the expressions complained of are all sound expressions, and 
true as they are sound. 

You say that you "have treated a 'Kentucky Catholic' 
with a respect that he is not entitled to," and that "the 
opprobrious terms he has seen fit to apply to the American 
party demanded a different style of remark." What do you 
call respect ? Is it respectful to say, in the face of my solemn 
denial, that I hold opinions which would make me a traitor 
to the government under which I w^as born ? Is it respectful 
to caricature my faith, and hold me up to public contempt ? 
Is it respectful to call me " corrupt," " superstitious," "un- 
patriotic," and " aggressive ? " Is it respectful to say that 
I am unfit, because of my faith, to serve my country in any 
position to which she might call me? Is it respectful to 



i 



70 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

recommend the formation of secret societies for the avowed 
purpose of practically annulling in my regard tlie spirit of 
the constitutional compact by which my rights are secured ? 
Is it respectful to swear, as you have done in your dark-lan- 
tern assembly, not only that you will not vote for me were I 
a candidate for any office, but that you will break off all 
'^ social '* relations with me ? Shall 1, with '^fawnhig hum- 
bleness,'' sa}^ to the party which kicks me into the gutter, 
wait till I rise and kick me again ? Eespcct, forsooth ! Why, 
you would treat an ill-natured cur with more respect than you 
are now according to Eoman Catholics, though born on the 
soil, and equal to yourself in all those qualities which mark 
the patriot, the Christian, and the gentleman. 

You do not like the "■ expressions" used by me in reference 
to your bogus American party. I scarcely supposed yon 
would. And yet, the terms u.sed, were *\good-set terms," 
and *' marvelous proper" expressions. Secret political asso- 
ciations, even when organized witliout the element of religious 
proscription, have always been " disgj-aceful." It is but a 
few years since you yourself so designated them, and in much 
stronger language than I have *'seen fit" to adopt towards 
them. You w^ere wont to call the Native American party, a 
faction with but one idea, and you roundly rated it for its 
proscriptiveness. Is it less proscriptive now, that it has 
added to the number to be proscribed the native horn Roman 
Catholic ? Does the addition of this second lialf idea to the 
one idea of Native Americanism, alter the features of the party 
so much as to take from it the proscriptiveness of which you 
complained ? You have doubtless had your reasons for so 
material a change of opinion on the subjects of religious 
proscription and secret societies. lago's injunction, **put 
money in thy purse," may indicate th«ir character. 

Can you say, that you are not ** pandering" to popular 
prejudice, when you endeavor to raise a wall of separation, 
socially and civilly, between the Protestant and Catholic ? 
Can you say that the constant stream of vituperation and 
calumny which you are pouring upon the faith of the Roman 
Catholic, is not calculated, and well calculated, to make him 
hated and contemned by Protestants ? There are almost 
daily instances of our clergy being insulted on the streets, by 
young boys, and even young girls. Where do these children 
learn such precocity of hate ? In the family circle, no doubt, 
where your fanatical tirades are read, and freely commented 
on. Are you not, then, engaged in establishing and pro- 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 71 

moting a most extended *' school of hatred ? '' In doing 
this, you have not the excuse of the bigot. He is insane, and 
is scarcely responsible for his acts. But you were not born 
yesterday, nor has your education been in the school of intole- 
rance. You do know, or ought to know, the almost certain 
effects of the principles you are advocating. The horrible 
atrocities, which, from one end of the country to the other, 
have marked the pathway of your party, give unmistakable 
evidences of what maybe expected from it, should your views 
be adopted by a majority of the American people. You are 
not battling for constitutional liberty ; this is already secured 
to you, and to every free citizen on our soil. The legitimate 
consequence of that fanatical hatred of Catholics, which, 
whether you know it or not, you are laboring to disseminate 
in the hearts of the people, can be none other than the license 
of the mob, free from all legal restraint, to cut Catholic 
throats, to desecrate Catholic altars, and to overtnrn, at the 
same time, those ** peculiar institutions'' of our country for 
which you affect so much regard. 

I speak to you not as a Catholic, but as an American 
citizen, when I say, and mark my words, the days of your 
anti-republican faction are numbeied. Tlie hand-writing is 
even now on t\\Q wall, wliich will consign its pernicious 
principles to the pit whence tliey liad exalcd, as a dark cloud 
in the moral atmosphere, causing tlie true lover of his 
country to tremble for the safely of jiis hopes in the perpetuity 
of our institutions, and gladdening the political freebooter 
with the prospect of plun^ler in tiio general devastation which 
it threatened. The contemptible party trick by V\^hich Know- 
Nothingism had atteuipte i to gain to its ranks the whole 
Protestant vote ot the land, under the niaiieiously slanderous 
plea that Catholics were {langoroiiS citizens, has proved a 
miserable failure. Many Protestants, injleed, w^ere caught in 
the trap so artfully laid for them : br.t the great majority have 
seen through the shallow device, and have spoken out in man- 
ful and stern rebuke of tlie iniquity of those, who would here 
raise the standard of persecution, against any, even the 
weakest religious body in the land. Tlie patriotic blood 
which once held its course in the veins of their liberty -loving 
sires, has not lost its virtue in the liearts of the children, to 
still pulsate for freedom, civil and religious. 

They have looked upon their Catholic fellow-citizen as he 
is, and not as you represent him. They have seen that he 
was as ready to shed his blood at the call of his country as 



72 LETTEKS OF A KENTrCKY CATHOLIC. 

were any of his tradiicers. They have seen that when clothed 
in official authority, lie has modestly borne his honors and 
faithfully discharged his duties. Tliey have recognized in 
him no laggard in the promotion of the public good, in the 
advancement of knowledge, and in all that relates to the 
charities of life and its social requisites. Tiiey claim no 
authority to be the judges of his religious faith, which they 
clearly perceive does not prevent him from being a good friend, 
a good neighbor, and a good citizen. Free, themselves, to 
worship according to conscience, and recognizing the wisdom 
of those time-honored precepts left them as an inheritance by 
their fathers, thej do not find themselves called on to abridge 
the rights of others. With views so manifestly just on the 
part of the great body of the Protestants of the Union, do I 
not well say that the doom of your prescriptive party is 
already pronounced ! Let it perish ; and so perish eveiy 
political faction that shall attempt to lay a sacrilegious hand 
on the Constitution. 

I have prepared a critical review of many of the charges 
which you have brought against the Catholic Church, but the 
increased length it would give to this letter compels me to 
defer it. Whenever the editor of the Courier, for whose 
extreme courtesy I am under many obligations, shall find 
room for its insertion, I vvill again pay my respects to you. 

Yours, (fee, 

A Kentucky Catholic. 

Louisville, October 12th, 1855. 



LETTER SIXTH. 

Sir : According to the promise made in my last, I shall, 
in my present letter, endeavor to point out to you some few 
of the many misrepresentations, inaccuracies and positive 
fallacies, which have appeared in your several articles, on 
what you term the ** Papal controversy. '* The evidences 
which you have adduced, clearly taken at second-hand, from 
books made up by prejudiced caterers to the diseased tastes 
of those who have been taught to believe everything evil 
of Catholicity, are not such as you should present, or I 
receive. The simple catechism, which is placed in the hands 
of our children, will give you a much better notion of Catho- 
lic doctrine. This, at least, contains an acknowledged com- 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 73- 

pendiiim of our faith. It is extremely easy for those who 
have a motive to do so, to t^v^dst the '* worst into the better 
cause," and fully as easy for them to reverse the proposition, 
and to make that appear evil which is in reality good. 

There are some men, whose greatest happiness seems to 
consist in making objections. Were such a one a lawyer, he 
would go into extacies over a flaw in an indictment, which 
would have the effect to place society at the mercy of an 
acknowledged thief, burglar or murderer. When a man of 
this character is taken with the mania for religious discussions, 
he at once sets his wits to work to improve on the revelation of 
God, and generally ends either in originating a new system of 
religion from the vagaries of his own brain, or in being 
domiciled within the precincts of an insane asylum. 

Of all such, pride and selfishness are the ruling passions — 
the pride to be esteemed wise by their fellow-men, and the 
selfishness to despise the wisdom of others. Doctor Walton, 
a Protestant divine, in the preface to his Polyglot says, that 
*' Aristarchus heretofore could scarce find seven wise men iu 
Greece ; but that, in his time, so many idiots were not to be 
found, for all were divinely learned.'' The times have not 
much altered in this respect since Doctor Walton's day. 
Could the old Doctor but ** revisit the glimpses of the moon,'* 
and cast his spectacled eyes over your columns of objective, 
nonsense, he might well say — *' Save us from our friends." 
Thus far by way of prologue. 

First — The great bugbear through which you are endea- 
voring to frighten your readers out of their propriety, and 
make them the ** fools of their own imaginings," is nothing 
more than a fanciful picture of the doctrines imputed to the 
Catholic Church, of the Temporal Power of the Popes and 
the Deposing Power. These powers, now obsolete, were 
never looked upon as dogmas of the Church, and their 
assumption, on the part of the Popes of the middle ages, 
was the result of circumstances in the histoiy of the times, 
which not only justified, but imperatively demanded the 
exercise of them at their hands. You v/ould mnch better 
understand the necessity which impelled the Popes to assume 
and exercise these powers, werg you to read the Histoiy of the 
Times of Innocent the Third and Gregory the Seventh, by 
the Protestant historians, Hurter and Voigt, I can scarcely 
hope, however, that yQur love for truth is ec^ual to such an 
imdertaking. Suffice it to say, that the Pope, in those 
days, was tjie r^cogfti^ed umpire ia all disputes between 



74 LETTERS OP A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

Christian nations. Bad princes often attempted, in defiance 
of the Canon-law which was engrafted on their civil codes, 
to interfere in the aclaiowlGclged rights of the Church. They 
claimed the nomination of incumbents to Episcopal sees, 
and frequently so managed that had men were installed into 
positions in the Church where they gave causes for public 
scandal. In ridding themselves of the -responsibility imposed 
by their religion, to respect the rights of their Church — rights 
which never interfered with the administration of good 
government — these princes seldom, if ever, failed to become 
tyrants in the worst sense of the term, bloodthirsty and 
immoral. The people, so much oppressed, before revolting 
from the authority which had so abused its position, ii^i 
order that the Head of the Church should ratify the voice 
which had already spoken in their hearts, had recourse to the 
Popes, to gain the sanction of the Church to purposes 
demanded of them by the rights of humanity. It is a well 
known fact, that whenever the Popes did interfere in the 
administration of temporal governments, it was in order to 
protect the people from tyranny and oppression, and their 
privilege to so interfere, was a privilege distinctly recognized 
by the governments themselves. It follows, therefore, that 
it was not an usurped privilege. 

By a imiform understanding, then, of all Christian nations, 
the Popes were recognized, not precisely as having power to 
depose kings, but as being the judges for the people of the 
justice and wisdom with which they reigned. Is it not a 
little singular, that, in our day and in our country, men are 
to be found, w^ho, though professing the republican principle, 
that all governing power is directly referable to the will of 
the people governed, can yet find no language sufSciently 
strong in which to denounce the action of the Popes of the 
middle ages in asserting and vindicating the rights of the 
people against kingly oppressio.n and tyranny? As republi- 
cans and as men, they should be thankful that there was a 
power in those days equal to the task of protecting the peo- 
ple. Bigotry, however, is always inconsistent, and never 
more so than when the Papacy is the subject of its aspersions. 

The criterion of truth, and test of sound doctrine in the 
Catholic Church, is the golden rule ''Quod semper, quod 
uhique, quod ah omnibus *'—-** What has been held ever, and 
everywhere, and by all.'' The questions, then, of the Tem- 
poral Power of the Popes and the Deposing Power, are to be 
tried by this rul«. 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 75 

L The exercise of these powers was unheard of in primi- 
tive times ; therefore, the doctrine could not have been held 
always. 

II. Many of the Fathers of the Church are distinct in 
marking out the dividing line between the spiritual po^\ er and 
the temporal power ; therefore, the doctrine was not advocated 
by all. 

III. At no time have these powers been exercisefl over all 
nations ; therefore, the Church * 'everywhere" has not acknow- 
ledged them. To the proofs : 

1. Christ has said, ** Give unto Ca3sar the things that are 
Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." The 
Saviour, in this, distinctly teaches, that those to whom is 
given temporal power, are to be obeyed ; but, He as distinctly 
implies, that what is due to God shall not be rendered to the 
government. The Apostles, the Popes for ages, and the 
Martyrs of every age, though they accorded to the temporal 
rulers true civil allegiance, have preferred rather to suffer death 

^ than to abridge the Almighty of that service which He alone 
might claim. 

2. St. Paul vindicates the Christians, whom the Romans 
confounded with the Jews, when they, on the pretense that it 
was derogatory to the people of God to submit to heathen 
dominion, had brought the armies of Eome to the gates of 
their city, by saying that *' Every soul must be subject to the 
higher powers ; there is no power but from God, and those 
that resist receive damnation to themselves." 

3. St. Justin, martyr, says, **The ('hristians worship 
God only ; they are subject to the emperor in all things 
else." 

4. Many of the Fathers lay down the broad rule that 
** Kings have none above them but God alone, who made 
them Kings.'' 

5. Canon law declares that '* Kings acknowledge no supe- 
rior in temporals, and that appeals concerning temporals shall 
not be brought to the Pope's tribunal." 

6. St. Augustine, speaking of the early Christians, says, 
** They could, at their pleasure, have deposed Julian, but 
would not, because they w^ere subject from necessity, not only 
to avoid anger, but for conscience and love, and because our 
Lord so commanded." 

7. In the same connection, Tertullian asks, **Should we want 
numbers and forces if we had a mind to be open enemies." 

8. Cardinal Damianus, speaking of the kingdom and the 



76 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

priesthood, says, ''The proper offices of each are distinct , 
that the king may use the arms of the world, and the priest 
be girt with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of 
God.'' 

9. You say that, ** Pope Pius the Seventh, in his instructions 
to his Nuncio at Vienna, proclaimed his rightful authority to 
depose kings and dissolve oaths of allegiance." I pronounce 
the whole charge /aZse, and challenge your proof. 

10. You say that the present Pope, ** by his brief issued in 
1851, in reference to the South American Bishops, boldly 
proclaimed the doctrine of temporal allegiance to the Holy 
See.'' This charge is of the same character, and was doubt- 
less obtained from the no -popery storehouse of ready-made 
falsifications, where certificates to prove any absurdity are 
manufactured to order. 

11. Gallicanism did not consist in merely a disclaimer of 
the temporal power of the Pope, as you would make appear. 
It aimed at such liberties in discipline and worship as threat- 
ened to make a National Church, severed from unity. This 
the Pope resisted. When it was question of framing a con- 
cordat with France, Pope Pius the Seventh stated, that the 
first article in the Galilean declaration of 1682, regarding the 
indirect temporal power of the Pope, could not be insisted on 
by Rome. (See Bouvier's Theology.) 

12. One more evidence on this point, and I have done. I 
find the following extract of a letter from Cardinal Antonelli 
embodied in an article published in the last number of the 
Baltimore Metropolitan Magazine, on this very subject of the 
" Temporal Power of the Popes." The article to which I 
refer has been attributed to the pen of one of the most able 
and learned of the American Bishops. The letter of Cardinal 
Antonelli was written on the part of the Congregation of the 
Propaganda by the authority and command of Pius VI, to 
the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland, in reply to a letter 
of theirs addressed to his Holiness, at their meeting in Dublin 
in the year 1791. It is as follows : 

" Most Illustrious and Most Rev'd Lords and Brothers, 

" We perceive from your late letter the great uneasiness you labor under 
since the publication of a pamphlet entitled The Present State of the Church 
of Ireland, from which our detractors have taken occasiou to renew the 
old calumny against the Catholic religion with increased acrimony, that this 
religion is by no means compatible with the safety of kings and republics; 
because, as they say, the Roman Pontiff being the Father and Master of all 
Catholics, and invested with such great authority that he can free subjects 
of other kingdoms from their fidelity and oaths of allegiance to kings and 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 77 

princes ; he has it in his power, they contend, to cause disturbanceg and 
injure the public tranquillity of kingdoms with ease. We wonder that you 
could be uneasy at these complaints, especially after your most excellent 
brother and apostolical fellow-laborer, the Archbishop of Cashel (Dr. James 
Butler) and other strenuous defenders of the rights of the Holy 
See had evidently refuted and explained away these slanderous reproaches 
in their celebrated writings " 

Second.— You charge upon tHe Churcli that she teaches 
persecution of heretics. This is a falsehood. However 
individual Catholics may have acted or taught upon this 
subject, no proof can be furnished that persecution ever was 
a doctrine of the Church. During the first five centuries of 
the Christian era, the Fathers of the Church took for their 
motto the famous saying of Tertullian, ** 3m est religionism 
religionem cogere'' — '' it is not the province of religion to force 
religion." . 

1. St. Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, wrote to a 
Bishop who had beaten one of his clergy for heresy, ''That 
it is a novel and unheard of method of preaching the Gospel, 
to enforce faith with the cudgel." 

2. Two Spanish Bishops, Ithacus and Ursatius, solicited 
the tyrant Maximus to put the heretic Priscillian to death, 
from which cause, St. Martin of Tours, and all the Bishops 
of Gaul and Spain, refused to communicate with the sangui- 
nary prelates ; and they were afterwards banished. This 
Priscillian, by the way, must have been the first of the Know- 
Nothings, as the maxim of his sect was, that its members 
should be allowed to swear and foreswear themselves, rather 
than betray their secrets. 

3. The Council of Toledo forbids the use of violence to 
enforce belief, '* because," add the Fathers, *' God shows 
mercy to whom he thinks fit, and pardons whom he pleases." 

4. The Council of Lateran, under Pope Alexander III, 
acknowledges that *'the Church rejects bloody executions on 
the score of religion." 

5. St. Bernard says, /' Let heretics be convinced by words, 
not blows." 

6. St. Augustin, in his letter to Count Marcellin, says, 
** No doctrine should strike a deeper horror in the human 
heart than that which teaches that it is lawful to kill any 
person or persons under the pretense of heresy, and, under 
the mask of religion, spread the dismal seeds of the greatest 
evils in the Christian world — murders, dissensions, and 
wars." 

7. An Irish divine who wrote in the last century, says, that 



78 LETTERS OP A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC 

**to suppose it is a principle of Roman Catholics, to murder 
or cheat any person whatever, for, or undei- the pretense of 
his being a heretic, is to suppose them ignorant of the com- 
mandments of God,'* and he adds, ** We are never to arro- 
gate to ourselves the power of life and death which God has 
entrusted to the legislators, and to them alone." 

Third. — There is much absurdity and not a little disingen- 
uousness in your attempt to prove that American Catholics 
owe civil allegiance to the Pope, because they sympathized 
with him in his troubles during the rebellion of his own 
subjects in 1848. Did you ever read the history of this 
rebellion, and are you aware of the character of the men that 
promoted it ? If not, you may be in some measure excusable 
for not having yourself sympathized with the Pope in the 
difficulties to which you refer. After the accession of Pius 
IX, the whole Protestant world was clamorous in its praises 
of the wisdom of his acts and the purity of his motives. 
He released or recalled the political prisoners and exiles whom 
his predecessor had justly punished for their open treason. 
He labored to improve the condition of his entire people, the 
Jews included. He paid from liis own j)urse the amounts 
necessary to release those imprisoned for debt. Living him- 
self in a style of the utmost simplicity, his entire income was 
employed for the promotion of the public good. But in Rome, 
as elsewhere, there were men who cared not for God or con- 
stitutional freedom. The devil has always his strongest 
adherents at the door of the Church. Revolution was their 
object, and no concessions that Pius IX could conscientiously 
offer them, were acceptable. Thoroughly unprincipled, their 
idea of liberty only a license to gratify passion, they strove, 
and for a time successfully, to usurp the reins of government. 
The Pope was banished, his minister murdered, and a com- 
plete reign of terror inaugurated in Rome. 

The leaders of the insurrection had been indebted to the 
clemency of the Pope for the very freedom they enjoyed to 
walk the streets of the city. Banished or iniprisoned by his 
predecessor for treasonable acts against the government, and 
reinstated with all their civil privileges by Pius IX, on their 
promise of future loyalty, they were scarce at liberty before 
they were again fomenting treason. Their object accom- 
plished, and the government in their hands, what policy did 
they pursue ? Did the new government give any protection 
to life and property ? None whatever. They at once insti- 
tuted a complete system of espi(>nage, robbery and murder. 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 79 

The religious cominnnities were ruthlessly driven from their 
homes, and their property appropriated by the mob ; the 
priests were murdered in coid blood while officiating at the altar 
or when visiting the sick : the public buildings were rifled ; 
black mail was levied on all who could not or would not join 
in promoting the horrid atrocities which were publicly perpe- 
trated and publicly boasted of. This is a true picture of what 
these men did in the s^icred name of libeity. 

Look at this other picture of the great and good man for 
whose blood they thirsted. I quote from a letter dated Rome, 
August, 1849: 

"On another occasion the [>.»Uce arretted an iixiividual that was clandes- 
tinely distributiag copies of a tract eiititicd ' The History of Pius IX, the 
intrusive Pope, the foe of reiigiun, and the chief of ywuiig Italy.' The Holy 
Father, hearing of his aiTCjt, had the accused brought before him, asked 
him a few questions, and then said : * As your faults affect only me, I pardon 
you/ The man touched with the generosity of the act, threw himself in 
tears at the foot of the Pontiff, aad offered to namo the writers of the 
pamphlet. ^Xo, no,' said the Pope, ' lot their fauUs remain buried in silence, 
and may repentance touch their hciirts.' " 

Look Upon these two pictures, and tell me, upon which 
will the eye of the true many be he Catholic or Protestant, 
Republican or Monarchist, best love to rest? Can you 
** sympathize^' with the cut-throat and the robber, and look 
with abhorrence on the merciful and kind-hearted Pius IX ? 
I can scarcely think it ; but if it is so, I can no longer won- 
der t]>at you should, even here, labor to disseminata prejudices 
likely to breed outbreaks of popular fury, equal in atrocity to 
those enacted by the revolutionists of E,ome, in 1848. 

I have thus far confined myself to noticing the principal 
objections you make to the Catholic Church, namely, the 
Temporal Power of the Popes ^ the Deposing Power, and 
Persecution of Heretics. There are minor objections which 
will receive due attention in my next. 

To a Catholic, it is not at all wonderful that the enemies 
of the Church should single out the Papacy as the first object 
of their attacks. True to the instincts of the great enemy of 
all truth, whose emissaries, wittingly or unwittingly, they 
are, they make their fiercest assaults on the citadel of the 
faith. Blinded by passion, they hope to destroy the Papacy, 
and thus take from the mighty fabric, whose downfall they 
contemplate, the keystone by which it is held together. Fu- 
tile are all their hopes, and imbecile all their efforts ! One 
mightier than they has laid the strong foundations of that 
edifice, and reared that glorious arch, against which the 



80 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

"gates of hell'* shall rage in vain. The rock of Peter, 
crowned with the everlasting Church of God, though buffetted 
for ages by the surges of an ever-restless sea, fanned into fury 
by the pa^^sions of men, will still remain, and so long as 
time shall la.st, will serve as a beacon to guide the souls of 
the redeemed to the haven of never-ending peace. The Church 
of God throughout the whole world, bound indissolubly to 
this ''Kodv of Ages,'' ever suifering and ever triumphant, will 
still continue to present to all generations the beauty and 
comeliness with which He hath clothed lier, whose eternal 
beauty she but reiiect.s. 

Yours, &c., 

A Ken^tlx^ky Catholic. 
Louis villey October 18tA, 1855. 



LETTER SEVENTH. 

Sir: — I find that you frequently confound the power of 
excommunication, as sometimes exercised by the Head of the 
Church, with the temporal power, which you falsely impute 
to him. Excommunication is merely a severing from the 
communion of the Church, and is a power claimed and exer- 
cised by every Protestant denomination. The word anathema, 
in the form of excommunication of the Catholic Church, is 
the very word given by St. Paul in this connection. What 
do you think of the authority ? 

'2d. The '' Bulla in Coena Domini," which you woefully 
misrepresent, has not been pronounced, even in Rome, since 
the days of Clement XIV, nearly one hundred years. By 
this bull, it is true, all heretics were excommunicated, or cut 
off from the communion of the Church ; but this is nothing 
new. It mainly embodies forms of excommunication against 
robbers, extortioners, pirates, oppressors of the poor, mur- 
derers, sacrilegious invaders of holy things, and forgers of 
Papal documents. Look out, Mr. Editor, or you may come 
in for your share under this last head, lor, if you do not 
really *' forge Papal documents," you are at least taking on 
trust those already forged to your hand. Such a forgery is 
the pretended bull of Innocent 111. Neither that Pope, nor 
any other that ever lived, has intimated the monstrous propo- 
sition that ''no faith ought to be kept with heretics." 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATnOLIC. 81 

3d. You say that **in the United States it is the duty of 
the priests to invoke a curse upon all Protestants ; but they 
do it privately on the morning of the Thrasday beiore Good 
Friday/' In this charge there is not one atom of truth. 
Every priest -prsijH publidi/ for all heretics on Good Friday. 

4th. Why do you not give a translation of the form of 
excommunication found in the ** PontifiL-aie liomanum?'' 
You will find it quit^ a different affair from the fanciiul pro- 
duction of the author of **Tristam Shandy/"' 

5th. Though anxious to find the passage Avliieh you quote 
from the ** Roman Catholic Breviary/' I have been unable to 
set eyes on it. Will you do me the favor to indicate upon 
what page occurs the sentence, ** Whoever says the Roman 
Catholic Church is not infallible, let him be accursed." 

6th. Where did you come across the ridiculous idea 
embodied in the following paragraph from your article of 
the 3d inst : 

"We did not say, however, that the Bible was totally denied to the peo- 
ple. The Church does allow the Engli!<h to have the Bible in French, the 
f'rench to have it in English, the Dutch to have it in Russian, and the Rus- 
sians in Hebrew — and all to have it in Latin, or in any other language than 
the one they happen to understand." 

There is not one word of truth in this, and its absurdity 
will be palpable to every Catholic and to every well-informed 
Protestant. There is scarcely a Catholic family in the State 
of Kentucky that does not possess a copy of the Bible, and I 
doubt exceedingly if you will be able to find a single one not 
in the language vernacular to its possessor, except in the 
libraries of those sufficiently learned to read it in the Latin 
Vulgate, or the original Greek and Hebrew texts. 

7th. You are still harping on the Bishop's oath at conse- 
cration, and persist in tr £inslsLtmg per sequar, *'to persecute/' 
and impupiabo **to make war uj)on.'' A scholar of any 
pretensions, in seeking for the signification of a term, used fre- 
quently to express dissimilar ideas, should look at the connec- 
tion in which the word is used, before coming to a conclusion 
as to its meaning in a certain relation. You know that 
Bishops are positively forbidden to shed blood, or to strike, 
or to do aught, knowingly, that will cause the shedding of 
blood. Yet, in the face of your knowledge upon this point, 
you would make out that they swear to physically **persecute 
and make war upon heretics." They can scarcely do this 
without causing the shedding of blood. The true meaning of 
the v^'ord per sequar, in the Bishop's oath, is *'to follow after." 



82 LETTERS OF A KENTCCKY CATHOLIC. 

And how follow after ?^ Evidently, as 'Cw^. Fathers say, '*by 
argument, not by blows/' Impugnaho, in \\\^ connection 
used, simply means to imjmgn. Ami how impugn? By con- 
demning error. If Protestant ministers, on assuming the 
prerogative to preach the Gospel, do not actually swear to do 
all this, they must at least believe tliat their duty requires it 
at their hands. It is an inconceivable inconsistency to sup- 
pose that men, holding that they are *' sent of God'' to teach 
the truth, may yet fail to impugn that which is opposed to 
tiTith. The Catholic Church is never inconsistent. Whilst 
she argues that the outward manifestation of religious faith is 
not to \}Q forced on those unwilling to receive it, she as strongly 
contends that there^ should be no compromise with error. 
What would be thought of the physician, who, knowing the 
uniform bad effects of a certain drug, should yet, without even 
remonstrating with his patient on the folly of his act, stand 
calmly by and see him take the perhaps fatal compound? 
You would condemn him as one unworthy of confidence or 
respect. So with the clergyman that fails to impugn error 
wherever he finds it — no confidence is to be placed in his 
sincerity. 

I do not precisely look upon the Protestant who conscien- 
tiously impugns what he conceives to be error in the Catholic 
Church, as a bigot. It is only wdien his opposition is trans- 
ferred from the faith held to the individual holding it, that he 
assumes the character. Neither do I acknowledge in myself 
any attribute of bigotry on account of my honest opposition 
to the errors of Protestantism; because, whilst holding a faith 
I believe true, I cannot be consistent and not impugn whatever 
I consider error. Bigotry, on the contrary, not content with 
condemning that which to it has the appearance of error, inva- 
riably attacks the individual, and seeks, as you are seeking, 
to '* propagate faith with the cudgel." Error is frequently 
aggressive, for it labors to pull down truth to its own level; 
but truth is always tolerant, because it seeks, through love, to 
eradicate error, and to raise the individual to Ha o\vn stature. 
Error attacks the motives of men, and is thus always offensive, 
but truth, respecting their motives, and combatting only their 
errors, is ever kind and conciliatory. It will do you no harm 
to study these points at your leisure. You may possibly find 
them suggestive of valuable ideas, though not in the ordinary 
routine of your thoughts. 

As I have before stated, the ivording (not the meaning or 
intent) of the Bishop's oath of consecration, was changed, so 



LETTERS OF A KENTCfCKT CATHOLIC. 83 

far as the Chnrcli in Great Britain and Ireland is concerned, 
many years ago. For over ten years past, the form used in 
the tJnited States has been copied froiii that of Grreat Britain 
and Ireland. This change, as I have before intimated, arose 
from the fact that there were then, as now, men, who knew 
only enough to make them **wise in their own conceit," who 
could find no other meaning for the word persequar but '' to 
persecute,'' and who freely translated impugnaboy '*to make 
war upon." Such men, doubtless, in reading the passage of 
Holy Writ, wherein we are counseled to **take heaven by 
violence," would find themselves imperatively called upon to 
use ** villainous saltpetre" to insure success in their onslaught 
upon its golden gates. In order to quiet the sensitive nerves 
of such eminently literal individuals, the same power which 
had given prominence to Messrs. Persequar and Impugnaho,^ 
kicked them out of the formula of the oath. Are you satisfied ? 
8th. You have, in several instances, endeavored to reflect 
upon the Catholic Church, by giving exparte statements of 
the relative morality and temporal prosperity of Catholic and 
Protestant countries. In treating this subject, I shall draw 
all my proofs from Protestant authorities, principally from 
the *' Notes of a Traveler," by Samuel Laing, Esq., a 
Scotchman and a Protestant. Temporal prosperity in a na- 
tion, if we accept the plain teachings of the Bible, is no 
criterion of its religious welfare. The Saviour inculcates a 
spirit of poverty, contempt of riches, and even recommends 
the selling of alt temporal goods, and giving the proceeds to 
the poor. But it cannot with truth be said, that Roman 
Catholics are, or ever have been, behind their Protestant 
brethren, in the paths of science, in the fields of enterprise and 
discovery, or in the walks of literature and the arts. 

1. Mr. Laing, in comparing the relative condition of the 
English and French laboring classes, proves that the French 
are ''more comfortable," and better satisfied with their 
condition. 

2. He says : ''Let us do justice to the French character. 
Their self-command, their upon-honor principle, is very re- 
markable. They are, I believe, a more honest people than 
the British. Property is much respected in France, and in 
bringing up children, this fidelity seems much more carefully 
inculcated by parents than with us." 

3. Mr. Laing asserts that the Catholic population of Prussia 
is more industrious, enterprising and wealthy than the Pro- 
testant population of the same kingdom. 



34 LETTESIS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

4. He very pertinently asserts, that of **ali the populations 
in Germany, those wliicli have their points of spiritual 
government without their States and independent of them, as 
the Catholics have at Rome — enjoy certainly more spiritual 
independence, are less exposed to the intermeddling hand of 
civil power with their religious concerns, than the Protestant 
denominations, which, since the Reformation, have had 
Church and State united in one government, and in which 
the autocrat sovereign is de facto a Jlome-jPope/'^ 

5. Our traveler speaks of the people of the Protestant 
Cantons of Switzerland as presenting more evidences of 
prosperity than their Catholic neighbors, but that morally 
and religiously they are far behind them. 

6. Speaking of the Italians, he says : *'It is in truth, neither 
•the bad government nor the bad religion of Italy, which keeps 

her behind the other countries of Europe. The blessings of 
Italy are her curse. Fine soil and climate, and an almost 
equal production over all the land, render each man too 
independent of the industry of his fellow man.'' Having 
attended a festival gathering of the lower classes in Venice, 
he remarks, **I did not see a single instance of inebriety, 
ill-temper, or unruly boisterous conduct.'' 

7. Mr. Laing says that in Protestant Prussia, * 'chastity, 
the index-virtue of the moral condition of a people, is lower 
than in almost any part of Europe." He speaks of Sweden, 
the ultra-Protestant State of all Europe, as thoroughly im- 
moral, the proportion of illegitimate births in Stockholm 
being as **one to one and a half." 

8. He says, *' The Prussians morally are slaves of enslaved 
minds, being under a system of compulsory education, com- 
pulsory religion, compulsory military service, and the finger 
of government interfering in all action and opinion." 

9. The most thoroughly Catholic country in all Europe is 
Belgium ; and her inhabitants are not behind those of any 
State in all those qualities which are indicative of a moral, 
prosperous, and happy people. 

10. In conclusion, on this subject, permit me to give an 
extract from a letter lately addressed to the Rev. J. B. 
McFerrin, of the Methodist Church, by Col. 0. A. Loch- 
RANE, a Protestant, of Macon, Georgia. He says : 

Is it not known to you that Luther himself said the morals of Germany 
had decreased since the abolition of the confessional, and is it not a melan- 
choly fact that in England the Protestants of the lower class are fearfully 
immoral ? Take three counties, Lancashire, Norfolk, and Herefordshire, and 
on the authority of Dr. Durbin, an American WealQ^an Methodist, wo find 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. g5 

that Lancashire, with a population of 1,667,664, for the years '39-'40-'41, 
had registered of all illegitimate children the astonishing number of 6,172. 
Norfolk, with a population of 412,361, for the same time had 2,422, and 
Herefordshire, with a population of 114,438, had for the same time 681 j 
deduct the minor population, and then the adult males, and you have con- 
firmed the statement of Mr. Gee, of Lincolnshire, himself an Englishman, 
who said of the low female class working in fields, out of fifty there were 
forty-nine cases of delinquency. Contrast this statement with Ireland 
where the people are poorer, the habits of life more seductive and social, 
and yet how anomalous the change ,• their delinquency is rare, not even one 
out of fifty is guilty of moral delinquency. It has been probably well said 
that virtue was indigenous to Irish soil, but it has taken cultivation to make 
it perennial. " jEx its quoe dicta sunt hoc conficio." 

I now come to a paragraph from your article of the 3d, 
which shows conclusively an open and hold advocacy, on 
your part, of a union of Church and State. Look at it, my 
Protestant fellow- citizens, and ask yourselves if this imported 
editor is not endeavoring to introduce anti-republican notions 
in the public mind. Here it is : 

Whether church and state are united or not, ecclesiastical. and civil tri- 
bunals should be alike subject to the sovereign of their own country — with 
God alone to preside over all. In England they are subject to the king. In 
Rome, they are subject to the Pope. In America, they should he subject to 
the people. 

By your theory, it would follow that Methodist Confer- 
ences, Baptist Associations, and Presbyterian Synods, are 
all under the jurisdiction of the State, which has the power 
to modify or abolish them at will I Is this Know-Noth- 
ingism ? If so, I do not wonder that honest men will have 
nothing to do with it. Of course, you. believe that the fathers 
of the republic, in embodying in the constitution a guarantee 
of complete religious freedom to all, only meant such freedom 
as majorities should be willing to accede to minorities. Now 
I beg to say to you, I will never believe that you can 
make *' Americans " subscribe to any such doctrine. They 
will still vindicate the wisdom of the framers of the constitu- 
tion in proclaiming freedom of religious opinion to every 
citizen on the soil. 

Your principal objections to the Catholic Church, having 
now received attention at my hands, before concluding this 
letter, which I trust is the last I shall be under the necessity 
of addressing you, I wish to ask you to cast a retrospective 
look over your life, from the time your foot first pressed the 
soil of Kentucky, up to the day when, regardless of your 
duty to your God, to your country, and to society, and for 
ends unworthy of a patriot, you became the leader of a fac- 
tion, whose vitality was the element of bigotry which it had 



86 LETTEBS OP A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

assumed, and whose aims and purposes were all unconstitu 
tional. Behold a man welcomed to our soil with true 
Kentucky hospitality, and cheered on from year to year by 
liberal hands and sympathizing hearts ; see him the staunch 
supporter of the State and Federal Constitutions, the advo- 
cate of sound principles, and the unswerving opponent of 
sectional legislation ; see him the rebuker of intolerance, the 
friend of the oppressed, the defender of the acquired rights of 
our adopted citizens, and the stern opponent of political 
trickery and social meanness ; behold him, at all times the 
consistent friend of the Eoman Catholics, making no differ- 
ence between their rights and privileges, and those of his 
fellow-Protestants ; see him rebuking the intolerance of the 
convention of New BTampshire for pennitting an odious test- 
qualification to remain on its statutes ; in a word, behold him 
the unequaled editor and the right-minded man. Such a one 
was George D. Prentice. 

The picture is not yet finished. All at once, a new party 
has sprung up in the land — an invisible party, which stalks 
in the dark, and hides in holes. All that is known about it 
here in the West, is, that Catholics and foreigners are not 
permitted to enter its lodges, and that its members are bound 
to secrecy, not only as to its plans and movements, but as to 
their own connection with the order. It is thought little of 
till it is found that the new organization has tricked the old 
parties out of the offices at most of the elections in the Eastern 
States. Its precocious strength gives to it a respectability in 
the minds of many, to which intrinsically it has no claim. 
The leaders of the movement, becoming bolder, seek to extend 
its ramifications over the whole land. They write, and 
preach, and declaim, publicly, of danger to the republic on 
account of the Roman Catholics. An insane fear of some 
portending and unknown evil, seizes on whole masses of the 
people. Suspicions are excited, friendships broken off, and 
enmities engendered. The Catholics, though none can see 
that they are at all changed since their fathers of old St. 
Mary's opened their doors to the fugitives from Protestant 
persecution, are strangely enough discovered to be deadly foes 
to *' our peculiar institutions.*' To be sure, they number but 
one to twenty of the Protestant population, and hold scarce 
one office in a hundred. But what of that ? They are too 
strong to be put down by means less extraordinary than 
secret Jacobinical clubs. 

People must be sworn not to vote for a Catholic, nor to 



LETTERS OF A KENJ'L-CKY CATHOLIC. 87 

hold '' social " intercourse with him. The '' order " increases 
with wonderful rapidity. Borne are l^rouglit into it becau.se 
of the novelty of the thing, for we are a curious people ; some 
because tliey do not like the religion of the Catholics, and 
having been unable to convert them through reason, imagine 
better success will attend their efforts when armed with a 
more tangible weapon ; some hate the Democrats, and are 
ready to try any desperate measures likely to procure their 
overthrow. Some join the lodges with the expectation of 
bettering their condition, and making business friends ; some 
with the hope of office at the hands of their brethren, and 
some, good honest souls, with more credulity than brains, 
because they really believe all the stuff and nonsense preached 
to them by the leaders of the movement. 

But the order is in search of a fugleman for the West, and 
our gigantic editor has not yet pronounced against the new 
monstrosity. He is hoping to turn the dark affair to Whig 
account, and is, in western parlance, ''on the fence.'' Over- 
tures are made him to lead the movement in Kentucky. Too 
intelligent not to see through the transparent humbug, the 
ends and aims of which were as repugnant to his judgment 
as were the means it employed to his tastes, he cannot, at 
once, make up his mind, even for sake of the pecuniary 
advantages likely to be gained thereby, to take charge of this 
child of darkness, and hold it up to his countrymen as the 
impersonation of republican beauty. Vacillating from day 
to day — at one time determined to hold to his old course, 
and stand by Whig principles, without meddiing with new 
issues ; and at another, excited by the proscriptiveness of the 
new party to write a leader which will consign its blundering 
carcass to the '' tomb of the Capulets ; '' now listening to the 
inward monitor, and again giving w^ay to the outward pres- 
sure* he finally meditates an inglorious surrender. 

His party is daily becoming weaker, and the councils of 
the new order are fast filling up from its almost abandoned 
camps. Will the editor follow ? He cannot yet conclude to 
do so. He says to himself, how can I advocate principles 
which I have publicly opposed for so many years ? How 
can I associate with men who are afraid or ashamed to pro- 
claim their policy and mode of action, and who strike in the 
dark? He firmly resolves to oppo.se the order; he even 
writes an article denouncing it, and already speaks of its 
appearance in his next issue. But the leaders and wire-pullers 
of th^ party know the ralue of their man, and hearing of the 



88 LETTEPwS OF A KENTCCKY CATHOLIC. 

threatened exposure, are determined to prevent it. The char- 
acter of the arguments used may be readily imagined. No 
doubt they showed him (on paper) their certain success in 
the coming elections ; the twenty thousand majority in Vir- 
ginia ** akeady sworn in;" North Carolina, and Georgia, 
and Tennessee, and Kentucky, and the whole South, already 
with them ; and then, the perquisites, which his adherence 
would insure to the editor ! No doubt, too, they held up the 
scourge of proscription before his face. Still he vacillates. 
While conscience whispers, patriotism, reputation, honor, into 
one ear, the devil thunders money into the other. Honesty is 
the best policy, says conscience. Money! money! says the 
devil. Consistency, J^riendship, says conscience. Money! 
money ! ! money ! ! ! cries the devil. The trial was too strong ; 
and the omnipotent dollar did the business. Conscience 
deptirtcd, and the editor was alone with his master. 

But now comes another phase of this crooked affair. The 
editor is not ignorant of his own value, and he is in a 
pesition to dictate his terms. We can well imagine him 
soliloquizing — 



" Reason, you rogues, reason : 
)U I'll endanger my soul gratis ? '* 



Think you 

'' Shall I fiddle for humbug, and not claim piper's pay? 
Shall I whitewash treason and bedaub truth with ink, and for 
'no consideration ? ' Never ! If I must needs do your dirtr 
work, it shall be to the tune of shell out, gentlemen Know- 
Nothings P' * 

The fence is cleared, and the editor is on the other side, 
" In for a penny, in for a pound,'' is now his motto. The 
Pope becomes, in the opinion of the editor, the rock on which 
our republican ship is destined to split. The Catholics are 
determined to seize on the country, and there is no way of 
preventing it, except for all to swear never to support them 
for office, and to at once break off all *' social' ' intercourse 
with them. Hatred must now take the place of confidence 
in every true '* American" heart, and fanaticism must be 
invoked, even at the risk of bringing down on the devoted 
heads of the Catholics the mercies of an irresponsible mob. 

Do you doubt the truth of the picture ? If so, look over 
the files of your Journal for the last few months, and convince 
yourself. Here we liave a paragraph rebuking the Catholics 
heaxvLse forced from self-respect to discontinue their subscrip- 
tious, and slanderously charging that they hate you, and 



LETTETvS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 89 

would, if they had but the power, **burn you at the stake." 
Here again we have charges, equally slanderous, that the 
American Bishops are *' political aggressors,*' that Catholics 
** owe civil allegiance to the Pope," that the Church inculcates 
** corrupt practices,'' and that its members cannot possibly be 
true republicans. Here we have copious extracts of fulsome 
adulation of yourself, taken from cotemporary prints, whose 
editors aspire to nothing better than to be toadies to the big 
gun of Louisville. Again we are presented with specimens 
of namby-pamby correspondence between provincial belles 
and our embodiment of all editoi'ial gallantry, on the occasion 
of the presentation of a silver cup, in which he is lauded to 
the skies as the very Bayard of Know-iSTothings, ''sans 
peicr et sans reproche.'' Here we have, in number after num- 
ber, the published proceedings of the different Know-Nothing 
Councils, recommending the brethren to rally to the support 
of the '' Organ." Here, again we have boastful paragraphs 
of the number of his friends and the ever-increasing length 
of his subscription list. These are followed by an unblush- 
ingly implied libel, that the Irish who were shot and maimed 
and burnt on *' bloody Monday," were, on the Saturday 
previous, incited to preconcerted aggressions on '* peaceful 
American citizens," by the Catholic clergy of Louisville, and 
that no place was so proper for this ** preparation " to com- 
mit murder, as the confessional, to which these poor persons 
had repaired in order to obtain strength of Almighty God to 
enable them to forgive their enemies. Do you yet acknowledge 
the picture ? 

I would ask you, before concluding, if the Catholics of 
this country have ever attempted anything which can possibly 
be construed into a purpose on their part to destroy or abridge 
the liberties of Protestants, Jews or infidels ? If they have 
not, would it not be more consistent with justice and honesty, 
to await some show of the evil intentions which you charge 
npon them, before attempting to create a distrust of them in 
the public mind ? Even were the slanderous allegation true^ 
and they had any such purpose in contemplation, w^hat possi- 
ble chance would they have to execute their designs ? Hav« 
you no faith in the religious principles you advocate? — no 
confidence in the ** invincible power of truth," to correct the 
threatened evil, that you should go back to the exploded policy 
of persecution ? Do you anticipate that half the Protes- 
tants of the land will turn '' Papists " if the **arm of the 
flesh " is not invoked to prevent them ? Such must be your 



90 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

idea, or else you are taking an enoiTnous amount of pains to 
very little purpose. Whatever others may think, I will still 
stick to the opinion, that all your no-popery ebullitions are 
mere political ** springes to catch woodcocks,*' i. e. votes for 
Know-Nothingism, and subscribers for the Louisville Journal, 
Yours, &c., 

A Kentucky Catholic. 
Louisville, October 23c?, 1855. 



LETTER EIGHTH. 

Sir : I had hoped that I should not again be called upon 
to notice attacks from you upon the Catholic Church and its 
members. I had tliought that, even if you were lost to a 
sense of justice and fairness as to the rights and privileges of 
your Roman Catholic fellow-citizens, the indignant rebuke of 
the principle of intolerance, as indicated by the voice of a 
vast majority of tlie American people in the recent elections, 
would luive influenced you to abate the rancor of your fanati- 
cism, and given our people some assurance of future peace and 
quiet. I find little, it is true, either in your article of the 
25th October, addressed " to a Kentucky Catholic,'' or in 
that of the 15th November, that demands attention ; yet 
there are some things in them which I do not feel disposed to 
pass over in silence. 

You speak most flippantly of what you are pleased to call 
our ** monstrous superstition'' and **its endless follies." 
Would that you understood these follies, and that the moral 
opthalmia by which you are blinded could be so far removed, 
that you might see the true character of that '* monstrous 
superstition," that *' folly of the cross," which, for eighteen 
himdred years, has been able to count among its votaries the 
good and the pure and the talented of all peoples and all 
tongues. It is neither learning, nor talent, nor purity, nor 
goodness, that the Church has to fear. Her enemies are the 
devil, the world and its allurements, human respect, pride and 
concupiscence. No Christian virtue ever lost a soul to the 
Church. 

I cannot conceive what reasonable motives you have for 
battling, unasked, in behalf of individual Roman Catholics 
against the Church» in respect to ** the right of private inter- 



LETTERS OF A KENTTTCKy CATHOLIC. QJ 

pretation and judgment.'* You, as an outsider, have no 
interest in the matter at all. You will not acknowledge that 
you have a certain faith to offer us in place of the one we hold. 
Truth is not liahle to change ; but you advocate a principle 
— that of private interpretation — provocative of incessant 
changes. What meaning do you attach to the prayer of the 
Saviour, that his disciples might be one ? or the injunction 
of the Apostle, Be you of one mind? You recognize as 
necessary to the correct administration of civil law, though 
written and compiled into books, that there shall be an 
established tribunal for its interpretation. Will you say that 
Christ, who was Wisdom Incarnate, in commissioning his 
ministers to teach, as having authority, gave to them no 
certain rule to insure unity in teaching, and consequent unity 
in faith ? The Catholic Church alone has such a rule, and 
she alone can consistently address to her children the injunc- 
tion of the Apostle that they he of one mind. 

Have you ever reflected on the striking dissimilarity ag 
exhibited in the character of the converts to Catholicity, and 
of those perverts whom Protestantism and their own inclina- 
tions to evil have induced to leave the Church ? This dissimi- 
larity is a subject worthy of your study, and may give you 
some insight into the probable motives by which the two 
classes are influenced in changing their views of religious 
truth. Compare the Gavazzis, the Acliillis, and the Justini- 
anis, as enlightened by Protestantism, with the Newmans, 
and Fabers, and Wilberforces, who have come under the 
''monstrous superstition" of the Catholic Church! On 
which side will you find the learning, the talent, and the 
exalted purity of character ? Which of the two classes will 
you find winning souls to God by preaching Christ and Him 
crucified ? The saying of the witty Dean Swift about the 
''weeds from the Pope's garden," is as true now as it was in 
his da}', and will continue true to the end. Protestantism 
can give nothing to the Catholic which he does not already 
possess. It can add nothing to his present happiness, and 
nothing to his hopes for the future. For the word of God, it 
offers him the uncertain conceptions of the individual mind, 
and for the unity and fixity of the Catholic faith, the thou- 
sand and one vagaries incidental to its very foundation^ 
principle. It has nothing positive, nothing not liable to 
change with the ever-changing phases of human opinion. 

You still think that " unless Bishop Spalding issued to me 
a license " to discuss the subjects I hafve attempted to treat, L 



92 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

have " doomed myself to a cord of excommunication/* and 
you flatter yourself that you see a way of involving the Bishop 
in having ''participated in preparing'* the letters of *' A 
Kentucky Catholic/' and in '* vituperating the American 
party/' I should like to know v/hat connection there is 
between the doctrines of the Catholic Church and ''vitupe- 
rating the American party ? " But you are still reckoning 
without your host. It is perfectly allowable for any Catholic 
to lay down facts as they exist, or, in other words, to state 
what are the teachings of the Church on any given point. 
Try again! Hunting for "mares' nests" is not usually 
considered a profitable employment ; but you may be able to 
make it pay. 

You say that you do not believe in the rights of kings to 
rule in temporals, or of the hierarchy to rule in spirituals ; 
that " the claims of each are founded in usurpation ; that " it is 
a,s anti-republican to bow our heads and hearts to an ecclesi- 
astical hierarchy as it is to a political empire/' and that " our 
religious creed should be as free as our political creed." This 
you may consider very fine talk, but it lacks the elements of 
both Christianity and common sense. The reasoning by 
which you are led to such conclusions is altogether rational- 
istic and infidel. You can go but a single step further before 
you are plunged into anarchy as to temporals, and into infi- 
delity as to spirituals. All dominion is from God, and when 
rulers govern according to justice, their right to rule is directly 
referable to the will of God. The teachings of the scriptures 
are perfectly explicit on this point. The action of the fathei's 
of the republic was justified only on the plea of the tyranny 
and injustice of the goveinmcnt of Great Britain. No other 
justification was ever attempted to be .set up for the revolt of 
file colonies. This, to be sure, was sufficient ; for the eternal 
law of justice is of as binding force upon kings and rulers as 
upon the people. Will you say that Saul and David usurped 
authority wdien they claimed the right to rule the Jewish 
people ? 

But you acknowledge no rights of spiritual nders. If you 
mean that they have no rights enabling them to force obedience 
by physical pains and penalties, I agree with you. As I do 
not acknowledge any right in the civil government to force 
conscience, so I do not acknowledge any such right in the 
spiritual order, from the fact, that this would be interfering 
with the attribute of free-will wherewith Almighty God has 
endowed his rational creatures. But this is quite a dij0ferent 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 93 

thing from acknowledging that those whom Christ has 
appointed *'to rule the Chm-ch of God" have no right to 
command my moral obedience. Yon, as a Protestant, must feel 
a positive obligation resting upon you to obey the discipline of 
your Church. Therefore, you are no more free to disobey the 
ecclesiastical rules by w^hich you profess to be governed, than 
I am to set aside the positive laws of the Catholic Church. 
When I am commanded by an authority which you will not 
presume to dispute, to hear the Church, I dare not say that 
the Church has no right to exact my obedience to her laws, 
because I would thereby offer an insult to the authority by 
and through which only she claims to exercise the right **to 
govern,'' as you say, my ** spiritual nature." 

I have read the article in Mr. Brownson's Eeview, to which 
you have called my attention ; and, if you will permit me to 
say it, though I find some things in it likely to be misunder- 
stood, and something also of uncharitableness in reference to 
the opinions of many Catholics who differ from him, yet, on 
the whole, he says nothing calculated to alarm Protestants, 
He gives an exposition of a principle which forms the basis 
of true religious liberty. But you certainly misstate and 
possibly misapprehend the views of Mr. Brownson. The 
principle he defends is one which, if you be a Christian at 
all, you cannot yourself condemn. He argues that the law 
of God is above all human law, and that no law is binding 
on the consciences of men which contravenes the established 
and known will of God. This proposition is incontrovertible, 
and the man who would oppose it, has no conception of the 
meaning of religious liberty. He says Catholics and Protes- 
tants have each a standard by which to judge when human 
law oversteps its defined path and trenches on conscience; 
that ** every Protestant sect is for its members a representative 
of the spiritual order," which order is above the temporal 
and not subservient to it, and that *' every Protestant, Jew, 
or Gentile holds his religioii to be for him the law of his 
conscience, therefore, the highest of all laws." He further 
says, " Let this be remembered, no Catholic claims any but 
spiritual authority for the Pope as Vicar of Jesus Christ," 
and ** there never was a Catholic of any note at all who 
denied the independence and supremacy of the State in its 
own order." Mr. Brownson, if I understand him aright, 
claims for the Pope, as the highest authority for Catholics in 
those matters relating to conscience, the right to judge for 
themf in how far, if at all, the constitution and la\v& of a 



94 LETTERS OF A KE^"TUCKY CATHOLIC. 

State are opposed to tlie laws of God. Some may say that 
this is a claim set up by Bomaii Catholics for the exercise, 
on the part of the Pope, of an indirect temporal authority. 
But so far as this country is concerned, the question has been 
already decided, nor is there the slightest danger of its ever 
being mooted, unless upon the destruction of the constitution 
itself. As Dr. Brownson says, *' The Pope in permitting 
Catholics to take the oath to support and defend the constitu- 
tion has already decided that it contains nothing contrary to 
the Divine Law. That question is settled forever, and no 
Catholic can ever plead conscience for not obeying any law 
passed in accordance with the constitution." The phrase 
"The Pope in perrmtting Roman Catholics,'* used by Dr. 
Brownson, is objectionable, because it implies that the Pope 
has a power over the temporal order which he does not claim, 
and which is not accorded to him by the laws of the Church. 
His decisions are given on questions of conscience, precisely 
as judicial decisions are rendered in civil affairs, and, as I 
conceive, after application has been made to him by the 
parties interested. 

The objection which I bring against Mr. Brownson, is not 
that he states an opinion not held by most Catholics, nor that 
lie fails in his argument to prove its consistency with truth 
and right reason ; but, with true deference to the opinions of 
the learned reviewer, I hold that he has no right to call that 
a temporal power, even w^lien modified by the term indirect, 
which is in reality only a spiritual one. It requires no 
profound consideration of a reflecting mind, whether Pro- 
testant or Catholic, to come to the conclusion that all law, at 
least in Christian countries, has for its basis the accountability 
of man to Almighty God for all his actions. This being so, 
none may say that the Divine law is subservient to human 
law, and therefore, all will acknowledge that the law of one's 
conscience is to be held as binding, even against personal 
restraint, or death itself at the hands of the civil magistracy. 
If the legislature of Kentucky, for instance, should pass a law, 
supposing such a thing possible, commanding the Presbyterians 
to give up their Churches to the Episcopalians, and themselves 
to conform under certain penalties to the faith of the English 
Church, the disciples of Calvin would not be slow to assert 
that the law of their conscience was above the law of the 
State, and, without waiting for official action on the matter 
by the General Assembly of their sect, they would refuse to 
obey the law, preferring to suffer the penalty for resisting it. 



LETTERS OF A KEN'TUCKY CATHOLIC. 95 

But suppose the legislature passed a law which should be 
regarded by a portion only of the Presbyterians as incompatible 
with the duty which they owe to Almighty God, what, in 
such case, would be their action in the premises ? Would 
they not convene the authorities of their Church to decide 
upon the matter, and would not the action of these authorities 
be recieved as a definitive exposition as to what should be the 
course of the members of the Church in regard to the law ? 
No man in his senses would say that the authorities of the 
Presbyterian Church claimed by their decision a right to 
legislate upon temporal matters. So with Catholics — if the 
State passed a law which clearly interfered with their rights 
of conscience, they would refuse to obey it, no matter what 
might be the consequences. But if a doubt arose as to whether 
or not the law did interfere with conscience, the supreme 
authority for them, in the List ]-e.sort, would be the Pope, 
whose decision, as to the nature of the law, would be final. 
But the Pope does not here decide upon a question of tem- 
porals, however temporals may be aifected by his decision. 
He looks solely and eutirely to tiic paramount obligation of 
the Catholic Chi'istiaii, wlieiievyr a confiiet arises between the 
civil law and the law oi' conscienje, ''to obey God rather 
than man." 

There is no conscientious act of the Christian which may 
not be interfered with through the action of ignorant or wicked 
legislators. But the law^ of conscience is above all enactments 
which attempt to put limits to the freedom of faith and 
worship, supposing such faith and worship not incompatible 
with good morals and the just rights of others. The rule of 
any religious body for the precise definition of the duties of 
its members in the spiritual order, though in some instances 
it may conflict with temporal things, is not, because of such 
conflict, necessarily a temporal rule, nor should decisions 
made by such a rule be looked upon as attempts to control 
matters outside of the spiritual order. The Pope, in his 
decisions, whether they be favorable or adverse to laws of 
questionable obligation on conscience, cannot consider the 
matter in a temporal light. He is the judge only of questions 
of conscience, and possesses and exercises only a spiritual 
power. I, therefore, hold that Dr. Browns on errs in calling 
that a temporal power, which looks only to spiritual things. 

But all Catholics, with the Pope at their head, agree fully 
that no law passed in accordance with the Constitution of the 
United States can possibly be opposed to the Divine law; 



96 LETTERS OF A KENTCCIvY CATHOLIC. ^ 

therefore, the attempt to deprive Catholics of their civil 
privileges on the plea that they hoLl opinions dangerous to 
our institutions as they exist under the Constitution, is nothing 
more nor less than a sham and an artifice, having for their 
ohject the destruction of the Constitution itself, in order to 
enslave and degrade Catholics. 

Yours, &c., 

A Kentucky Catholic. 
Louisville, November 21st, 1855. 



LETTER NINTH. 

Sir : I desire to make some comments upon the following 
paragraphs, which I clip from your article of the 25th of 
October : 

" If you were to disclaim, until you grew black, tlie owning of temporal 
obedience to the behests of the foreign monarch, it would avail you nothing 
so long as you continue to recognize his divine prerogative to reign over the 
spiritual and better part of your nature. * * -sf * 

" Popes, sir, love despotism, and despots love Popery. And, Kentuckian 
as you are, your own love of liberty could not stand the test when put in 
competition with your love of Popery. You admit yourself that all the 
American Catholics sympathized with the Pontiff instead of the people in 
the revolution of 1845. * * * ^^ * * 

" Indebted to the clemency of the Pope I EepuUicans thankful to the Pope I 
Sir, are you not ashamed to talk this way in Protestant America ? Is your soul 
fitupified with idolatry ? Do you imagine you are writing about the Almighty 
God himself? Clemency of the Pope I Thanlcfulness to Jiimfor vindicating 
the rights of the people I Beautiful language this for a Kentuckian 1 What 
right, sir, had the Pope to be in such a position that men must be indebted 
for freedom to his clemency, or we should bo thankful for his vindication of 
the people ? Is he any higher than a King, or any better than the people ? 

** ^ •«■ ■«• -K- -x- * ** 

" You relate this story in devout commendation of the Romish King. It 
betrays, on the other hand, to our mind the thoroughness of his despotism. 
As an American citizen, yon should have been ashamed to tell the story. As 
a native Kentuckian, you never would have told it, if the Vicar of Jesus and 
Jesus himself were not so indissolubly united in your heart, that you have 
transferred, in all its strength and depth, to the former the deference which 
is due only to the latter. And thus must it ever be with a Papist. Other 
citizens of America have sympathized with the Greek Revolution, with South 
American Independence, and with Hungarian and Italian struggles for 
liberty. But American Papists, with shame be it spoken, espoused the side 
of the Pope against the people of It^ily. They gloried and still glory in the 
interference of Austrian and French soldiery. And they would to-day take 
the part of their Holy Father against all the liberties of the world. We say 
— Down with despots and despotism. Down with Popery and the Papacy. 
And everlasting hostility to all who sympathize with them, or in any way 
give them aid and comfort. At the same time we desire to treat with 
kindness the persons of Papists, and never to molest any of their rights, ciTJl 



^ LETTERS OP A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 97 

or religious. And we would rejoice to embrace them a5 brothers in the 
sacred fraternity of Republicans. But this can never be done as long as they 
cling, with the ardor of religion, to the throne of a European monarch. * * 

"It now remains to be seen whether you will disown the Romish form of 
excommunication used against those who draw away virgins from the banner 
of papal chastity. In point of minuteness, malignity, and variety, the devil 
himself cannot surpass this curse. As a swearer the devil cannot beat your 
Church unless he can beat this curse 

** This form of excommunication is a composition of Anti-Christ — the Man 
of Sin — the Son of Perdition — the Great Apostasy — the Whore of 
Babylon — the Mystery of Iniquity — the Mother of Harlots. If this dreadful 
personage never imposed fetters or practiced persecution, it certainly displays 
no mean proficiency in the art of cursing and swearing. " 

In reference to the first paragraph above quoted, I suppose 
that you will admit that Almighty God has the right to reign 
over your ''spiritual nature," and that you recognize the 
Divine Voice as speaking to your spirit through some outward 
system of Church government, whose rules of discipline are 
binding on your conscience, and with which you do not admit 
that the State has any right to interfere. So with me, in 
listening to the teachings of the Church, I recognize the voice 
of the Founder of the Church, of whose sacred doctrines she 
is the keeper and the exponent. The only difference between 
us in this respect is, that while the seat of the authority which 
claims for you the right to say when the State does interfere 
with conscience, is in the General Assembly of the Presby- 
terian Church, or in some other local body of like character, 
the authority for me, in the same connection lies, in the 
last resort, in the Supreme Pontiff, not of a local or even 
national Church, but of the Catholic or Universal Church 
of God. Go teach all nations — One Lord, one Faith, one 
Baptism. 

Your saying that *' Popes love despotism, and despots love 
Popeiy," is as false an asseiiion as was ever penned. The 
Popes have always been the most consistent and unswerving 
advocates of the rights of the people. For centuries the 
Papacy was the only power able to curb the lawlessness of 
despotic kings and rulers. To their praise be it spoken, and 
as an American and a Kentuckian I am neither afraid nor 
ashamed to say it, the Popes of those ages never shrank from 
the duty, imposed upon them by their position, of holding 
np before the eyes of iniquitous rulers, the just judgments of 
God for the evils of despotism. And ** despgts love Popery ! *' 
Just so much as they love virtue and truth and religioii ! 
l^ere never was a despot who wa^ ^ true child of the Church, 
and every act of despotism is an insult to the Divipe Law gg 
promulgated by tli§ Qhurch. q 



98 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

So far from recognizing anything in my religion repugnant 
to civil and religious liberty, my love of liberty is increased 
and concentrated, as it were, by my love of Catholicity. The 
Papacy is a part, and an integral part, of my religion. With 
the Pope, as '*King of Rome, " or as '*a foreign monarch,'* 
I have nothing to do. He asks for no civil allegiance from 
me, and I owe him none. By a positive law of the Church, 
of which he is the earthly head, I am commanded to pay true 
and faithful allegiance to the constitution and laws of my 
country, nor can I ever refrain from doing so, under the 
penalty of sin. 

But in spirituals, in matters of conscience, which both 
Protestants and Catliolics acknowledge to be above all human 
law, Christ, for me, '* speaks by the voice of Peter.'* I reve- 
rence the Yicar of Christ, not as Jesus, as you profanely 
charge, but as having authority from God to decide questions 
of conscience ; and therefore to be reverenced, in order that I 
may not fail to pay due homage to Him with whose commis- 
sion he is charged. *' He that hears you, hears me ; he that 
despises you, despises rae'' 

All who have the power, however they come by it, to pun- 
ish and to remit punishment, are capable of the virtue of 
clemency ; and I again say it, this is tfie proper word whereby 
to designate the quality of those acts of forbearance and kind- 
ness on the part of Pius IX, to which I referred you. Why 
should I, as '^ an American and a Kentuekian, be ashamed to 
tell the story ? '' Kentuckians have been wont to give honor 
to whom honor is due, and to recognize good deeds, no 
matter by whom enacted. Do you imagine, that you have so 
much changed them, by inculcating a system of deception and 
prevarication, as to make them ashamed to tell the truth ? 
Many of my countrymen, doubtless, have been inveigled into 
the dirty temples of Know-Nothingism, where you, as high 
priest of the order, are engaged in offering sacrifices, and 
bloody ones, to the Moloch of Fanaticism ; but better counsels 
will yet prevail, and these men will live to be ashamed, not 
only of their associates and the unfair means employed by 
them to compass their ends, but also of their groundless and 
unjust suspicions of the patriotism of their Catholic fellow- 
citizens. 

^* Ashamed to talk this way in Protestant America ! '* 
By what right do you undertake to call this land Protestant 
America ? The constitution indicates no such distinctive 
appellation. You cannot so call it on account of prior dis- 



LETTERS OF *A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 99 

covery, for the Catholics were before you ; nor on account 
of Protestants having first promulgated within our borders 
principles of religious freedom, for again the Catholics of the 
Colony of Maryland were the pioneers of religious toleration ; 
neither can you because of our civil liberty having been won, 
exclusively, by Protestants ; for Catholics fought, and bled, 
and died beside their patriot Protestant countrymen, in order 
to establish this very liberty; nor yet can you do so on 
account of your present numerical strength, for a vast 
majority of the American people are attached to no religious 
body, and, according to reasoning based on such an idea, our 
country might be well called the America of Indifferentism. 
Protestant America, indeed ! This hind, let me tell you, is 
neither Protestant America, nor Catholic America, nor 
Infidel America, but the America of Freemen — but freemen 
only in the sense of the constitution and right reason ; that 
is, each citizen is free to act as he pleases, and believe as he 
pleases, and worship as he pleases, so long as his actions, 
belief, and worship, are not opposed to the good order of 
society, and the enjoyment of equal rights and privileges on 
the part of those w^ho choose to act, and believe, and worship 
in a different way from himself. 

But *-* Down w^ith Popery and the Papacy, and everlasting 
hostility to all who sympathize with them 1 " There is 
nothing equivocal about this. It is as palpable as a drawn 
sword, and as threatening as a blunderbuss at your breast. 
It looks to physical force, and is intended to provoke it. It 
means civil disabilities and social serfdom to all those Ameri- 
can citizens who happen to be Homan (Catholics. It means 
down with the constitution, and up with the rack and faggot. 
It means death to liberty, civil and religious. But hold ! 
you *' desire to treat with kindness the persons of Papists, 
and never to molest any of their rights, civil or religious." 
Everlasting hostility to Catholics as sympathizers with the 
Papacy, and no molestation of their rights, civil or religious ! 
This is queer, and I am unable to understand it. Perhaps 
you intend to give to the words everlasting hostility only a 
Pickwickian signification, and that, after all, you are sincere 
in your desire to treat the persons of Papists with all possible 
respect. Were this so, however, then the acts of mob vio- 
lence at the last August election, provoked as they were by 
incendiary appeals similar to that now under review, should 
have been of a character equally Pickwickian, But these 
were stern realities ; and I very much fear your everlasting 



100 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

hostility to Catholics, even when moclllied byyour disclaimer 
of personal molestation, is a reality no less stern. 

Perhaps you mean to say, you do not desire that Catho- 
lics shall be held as consiitittionally enslaved and degraded, 
but only practically/ so. This is a distinction without a dif- 
ference, and you therein accord to our persons a measure of 
supposititious kindness, requiring at our hands but suppositi- 
tious thanks. '' Down with Popery, and down with Papists ! ** 
but show them all kindness — o/ier they are down, we must 
charitably suppose. ''Everlasting hostility to all who sym- 
pathize with the Pope!" Shoot, hang, and burn — but 
take care to do it all in kindness towards their papistical 
bodies, and in order to indicate how dear to your hearts are 
their ** civil and religious rights." Here is kindness of the 
true Know-Nothing stamp ! Good men are you, and loving ! 
— in fact, you bid fair to rival him who was 

" The mildest mannered man 
That ever cut a throat or scuttled ship." 

You are extremely facetious on what you term the cursing 
propensities of the Catholic Church, and yet you will not 
acknowledge that her anathemas are any more to be regarded 
than would be her blessings, so far as their result for evil or 
good to you is concerned. Here is a strange inconsistency, 
and it will show conclusively to every candid mind, that 
when you attempt to justify your interference in the religious 
affairs of Roman Catholics, by calling in question the right 
of their Church to indicate what crimes against God's law 
are just cause for excommunication from her fold, you are 
only seeking ''excuses for malice." The Bible, in a thousand 
places, tells us of the state of reprobation in which the sinner 
always stands. But you would have the Church, which 
Catholics hold to be the exponent of the teachings of the 
Bible, to gloss over these threats of Divine vengeance. The 
Church but repeats the anathemas of Holy Writ against the 
evil doer, and for the very purpose, that seeing his rebellion 
against God in its true light, and the dreadful penalties which 
are its consequence, he may "make restitution and come to 
repentance." The charity of God, which *' willeth not the 
death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted and live," 
influences her to hold up the awful judgments of the Almighty 
before the eyes of the unrepentant sinner. 

Of a piece with your usual courtesy, when writing of 
Catholicity, are the expressions by which you designate the 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 101 

Churoli cf God in your closing paragraph. Tlie Chnrch, to 
say the least of her, had an exi>Lenec for centuries anterior to 
any form of Protestantism. 8 he has included within her 
pale the brightest intellects the world e'ver saw, and she has 
been the nursing mother of saints in every age of her existence. 
She has been the instrument of the conversion of every hea- 
then nation that has ever been brouglit into the fold of 
Christianity. Your o\^tl fathers, but a few centuries ago, 
were her obedient children, and you yourself, indirectly at 
least, owe to her all that you have of Christianity. She is 
no sect, for she exists every wliere, and as she has always existed, 
unchanging and unchangeable — '* the same yesterday, to-day, 
and forever.'' You cannot but acknowledge, that there was 
a time, when no other Christian Church did exist upon earth. 
You will also acknowledge, that in the Bible, which you hold 
to be the rule of your faith, there is recorded a distinct promise 
of the Saviour to be with his ministiy all days. It necessarily 
follows, that if the Catholic Church is not the Church of 
Clirist, He, whom Protestants and Catholics alike, acknow- 
ledge to be the God of truth, absolutely failed to make good 
his promise during those days when no other Church had 
existence. And this is the Church which you blasphemously 
call '' the Son of Perdition " and the •* Mystery of Iniquity.'* 
Still, I am not surprised that you should so call her. Insult 
naturally follows injury. You have causelessly, and in the 
face of the constitution of our country, banded with bigots 
to deprive your Catholic fellow-citizens of their civil rights, 
and it is most fitting that you should insult them in that 
which is to them their one hope for time and eternity. 

Yours, &c., 

A Kentucky Catholic. 
Louisville y December 4tth, 1855. 



LETTER TENTH. 

Sir : You commence your response to ** A Kentucky 
Catholic," of the 15th of November, with a paragraph of 
glorification over the recent Know-Nothing victories in Cali- 
fornia and Maiyland. I see it stated that, in California, your 
party entii'ely abrograted the religious test question ; conse- 
quently, its success was not insured on principles necessarily 



102 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

repugnant to mo as a Catholic. 1 am individnally opposed 
to the proscription of foreigners, and think that our present 
laws in reference to immigrants., if rightly administered, are 
ample for the pi'otection of American interests, so far as onr 
adopted citizens are capable of compromising them. But as 
there is no reason why a Catholic should not honestly enter- 
tain a contrary opinion, I have not considered myself called 
upon to discuss the subject at all. But, with reference to 
Maryland, you indicate as one of the principal causes of the 
success of your party, *Hhat no other State had such an 
opportunity to witness the atrocities and horrors of Priest- 
craft and Popery.'' Will you have the goodness, sir, to 
indicate a few of thgse Popish atrocities which have so much 
horrified the good Protestant people of Maryland ? First, of 
honest George Calvert — a Catholic from choice — he, who, 
at a time when persecution of Catholics was considered a 
duty incidental to official position, wrote to his Sovereign, on 
tendering his resignation of the office of Secretary of State, 
that ** being now a Roman Catholic, he could no longer hold 
his office, because in doing so he must be wanting to his 
trust or violate his conscience." Of what atrocities was the 
old Maryland Proprietary guilty ? He had the hardihood to 
refuse to hang up the rebellious Protestant non-conformists of 
Massachussetts, who had fled to him for protection. Here 
was an instance of unparalleled atrocity ! And Charles 
Carroll, of Carrolton? He horrified Protestant England 
by affixing his signature to the Declaration of Independence, 
and even went to such a length of atrocity as to jeopardize a 
princely fortune in the cause of American freedom. Was 
not this an act of unpardonable atrocity ? And Archbishop 
Carroll? — he was so abominably atrocious as to aspire, 
and successfully, to the friendship and confidence of such 
men as Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, and 
to have acted with the former in a delicate mission on public 
affairs to a neighboring colony. Could any man ask for 
better proofs of the '' atrocities and horrors '' of Popery in 
Maryland ? Shame on you, for having ^vritten so atrocious 
a calumny! Purer patriots, or belter citizens, no State can 
boast of, than can Maryland in the descendants of the colo- 
nists of old St. Mary's. 

But what were the atrocities exliibited by the Catholics of 
Maryland, and which caused the triumph of Know-Nothing- 
ism in that State ? I will tell you. They were the atrocity 
of being true to their God and true to their country ; the 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 103 

atrocity of wishing to live in peace and share in the blessings 
of freedom won by a common ancestry ; the atrocity of the 
lamb, as perceived by the eyes of the wolf, which still sees 
the stream of our national liberty muddled by the Catholic 
in his efforts to drink of its waters. These are the atroci- 
ties which engender your spleen, and which you and your 
followers in Kentucky, and your brethren in Maryland, are 
endeavoring to abate. 

You say that it was your ''purpose to dissect and resolve 
the system of Popery into its original elements," and you 
go on with a column and a half of what, no doubt, you 
intend for a dissection and resolution of that system, but 
which, unfortunately for yourself, proves only how little you 
really know of the nature of the system you would dissect. 
Polemic theology, like the gun of the redoubtable McFingal, 
becomes, in your hands, a power, not for the overthrow of 
your enemies, but for the discomfiture of yourself. Every 
argument you use is as applicable against the system of 
Christianity as it is against that of Catholicity. For instance, 
you say that ''the Papal organization has managed to prolong 
to the present day, through tedious centmies, its horrible exist- 
ence of fraud and rapine, of superstitious darkness and hardened 
power.'' Now, the Papal system, until three hundred years 
ago, was the only continuous and sustained system of Chris- 
tianity, recognized as such by the Christian world, if we 
except that of the Greek Church, whose sacraments and 
mode of government are identical with those of the Catholic 
Church. It follows, therefore, and particularly so, inasmuch 
as the acts for which you most impugn the Papacy occurred 
previous to the so-called reformation, that the system of 
Christianity itself, according to your reasoning, and in spite 
of the Divine promise, that the Holy Spirit should be with 
it always, leading it into all truth, was nothing better than 
" a system of fraud and rapine, of superstitious darkness and 
hardened power.'' The "Papal system has managed to pro- 
long its existence." It has done no such thing. Almighty 
God has *• managed" to perpetuate his own work. Catho- 
licity, and the Papacy as an integral part of the system, does 
not depend upon the wisdom of man for its permanency or 
stability. Were it otherwise than a Divine system, no power 
of man could have prevented it from being influenced by the 
all-pervading law of mutation, inseparable from the works 
of mere human wisdom. 

In what sense can you call Catholicity a system of " fraud 



I 



][Q4 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

and rapine?*' — ''of power, of finance and superstition?** 
You seem to infer that her ministers are rapacious of power. 
Power over whom ? — and how to be exerted ? Certainly not 
power over the State in its civil affairs. They ask of the 
State only the liberty of teaching and ministering, that they 
may, in the first place, gain souls for heaven, and in the 
second place, be instrumental, by inculcating the morality of 
the gospel, in forming good citizens for the State. Can you 
point to me a single Catholic government on the face of the 
globe, excepting the States of the Church, in which the 
Catholic hierarchy exeit any more influence over temporal 
matters than do the Protestant ministers of Great Britain 
and the United States over the civil affairs of those countries ? 
As Lacordaire says, ''The Church asks but a free passage 
through this world.'* 

''A system of fraud and rapine ? " Whom does it rob or 
defraud? Can you or any other man point to a single piece 
of Church property in the Union, to which the Bishop, or 
pastor, or trustees cannot show you a clear title, and which 
has not been honestly obtained ? For what purpose should 
the ministers of the Church act as robbers ? They have no 
families to aggrandize by the fruits of their frauds, and their 
style of living is of the simplest kind. Nonsense ! my dear 
sir ; you have been reading lying books about Jesuit rapacity 
until your mind has become diseased. 

*' A system of finance ? " If you mean by this, that the 
Bishops and priests of the Church are in the habit of specu- 
lating in stocks, and lands, and money, even for legitimate 
objects, you mistake completely in your estimate of their 
financial propensities. If you mean, however, that their 
financial acumen is very fj-equently exerted, for the purpose 
of raising funds for the building of churches, schools, hospi- 
tals, orphan asylums and the like, you are not far from the 
mark in saying that they are attached to a *' system of 
finance." Of one thing you may be perfectly advised, how- 
ever great sums may happen to pass through the hands of the 
Catholic clergy, but little sticks to their fingers in its transit. 

Did you ever acquaint yourself with the routine of life 
generally exhibited by the missionary priest in the United 
States ? Let me picture it for you. The missionary priest 
seldom has a patrimony of his own, and, consequently, he is 
at once dependent upon his congregation, in nine cases out of 
ten, a poor one, for his maintenance. After leaving the 
seminary, he is appointed to the pastorship of the congre- 



LETTEBS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 105 

gations, if a few isolated Catholic families may be called a 
congregation, covering often, one, two, three, and sometimes 
a half dozen counties. The duties pertaining to his pastor- 
ship, in so extended a mission, are always arduous in the 
extreme ; that of the confessional, which you seem to think 
one of his most pleasant employments, being the most so. 
Liable to be called upon at all hours of the day or night, to 
attend to sick calls, sometimes at the distance of a day's 
journey on horseback, he is frequently under the necessity of 
reading his office (a duty never omitted) while in the saddle, 
or at an hour when the fashionable ministers of Protestantism 
are resting after the fatigue consequent on the delivery of an 
evening discourse. On Sundays, after hearing confessions 
till perhaps near midday, and afterwards saying mass and 
preaching, he is permitted, for the first time since the previous 
evening, to take some refreshment. His day's labor is not 
yet over ; the sick and infirm of the neighborhood are to be 
visited, the wanderer to be reasoned with and admonished, 
the children to be baptized, and perhaps the burial service to 
be read over the remains of one w^ho has gone to rest. The 
delicate man of the world would consider the life of the 
missionary priest in the cities little less revolting. Sick calls 
are more frequent ; the hospitals and poor houses are to be 
visited, and his door is hourly besieged by the poor and the 
stranger, vrho look upon the priest as their natural friend and 
adviser, and perhaps the only one whom God has left them. 
These must be relieved, and if too poor himself to extend the 
necessary aid, he is compelled to exert his financial abilities 
to procure, by rapacious onslaughts upon the pockets of his 
more fortunate parishioners, that which may be requisite to 
keep destitution from the garrets and hovels of God's poor. 
Yes, you are right ; the Catholic system is a ** system of 
finance," and the treasures accumulated by its operations are 
laid up '* where mst does not consume nor thieves break in 
and steal." 

You may form, from the above, some idea of the missionary 
life of a Eoman Catholic priest in the United States ; and to 
enable you to understand that the only motives capable of 
influencing men to undergo so much labor and privation must 
be supernatural motives, it is only necessary to add, that the 
usual income of a Catholic missionary, in this country, does 
not equal in amount the salary of a sexton in one of your 
fashionable churches. The excess of his income, too, over 
and above what is necessary for his simple wants, is almost 



106 LETTERS OF A KENTCCKY CATHOLIC; 

invariably expended in cliarit}' , so tliat at liib death his effects 
are seldom more than enough to cover the expenses attendant 
on his funei'al. And these are the men you call rapacious 
and fraudulent ! They will forgive you, but it should be 
difficult for you to forgive yourself for having published so 
iniquitous a slander. 

The Catholic Church is also ** a trading corporation.*' I 
recollect to have read in the papers, some years ago, of some 
missionaries, in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, and elsewhere, 
who had made very pretty business operations in trading 
with the natives ; but these trading missionaries were not 
sent out by the Pope, and having families to support, and 
sons and daughters to educate and set up in life, I cannot find 
it in my heart to blame them for looking to the main chance. 

These good missionaries, doubtless, found that furs, and 
peltry, and barreled fish were to be had, and money to be 
made out of them. Native labor, too, was cheap, and though 
possibly they w^ould have preferred to exchange, for both 
commodities and labor. Bibles and tracts, which cost them 
nothing, and of which the natives, being unable to read, 
could make no use, these sons of the wilderness preferred the 
low wages offered for catching fish and trapping beavers. It 
was not for men situated as these missionaries were, to weigh 
too nicely the delicate question of moral ethics, presented for 
their consideration, and being unable to live by their ministe- 
rial calling, they added to it that of traders in furs and salmon. 
They were fishers, but not *' fishers of men.'' 

I do not mention these circumstances for the purpose of 
calling in question the good intentions by which the generality 
of Protestant missionaries are influenced, but merely to indi- 
cate, that before you charge the Catholic Church with being 
** a trading corporation," you should first look at home to see 
if your own skirts are clear. 

And Catholicity is also a *' system of darkened super- 
stition ! " The unbeliever will say the same thing of the 
system of Christianity. But I deny that you are capable of 
judging of the Catholic Church in this respect. You look 
at her through a false medium, which distorts and mystifies 
your vision, and makes those things appear superstitious, 
which, when clearly seen and rightly understood, are in 
reality beautifully harmonious and perfectly consonant with 
enlightened reason. No Protestant, whose ideas of the teach- 
ings and practices of tlie Church are gathered from the 
writings of her enemies, can possibly have a clear perception 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 107 

of their real meaning. I hold, therefore, that if you are 
really sincere in your opinions, as you state them, you are, 
to all intents and purposes, insane on those subjects connected 
with the Catholic Church. 

*' Money is power 1 " In worldly affairs, yes ; in spiritual 
affairs, no. Have you ever examined the yearly reports of the 
different Protestant foreign missionary societies, whose enor- 
mous incomes, if money was really powder in religious affairs, 
ought to enable them to convert the whole pagan w^orld in a 
few years ? It were well for you to make this examination, 
and to compile, for the benefit of your readers, a table, 
showing the cost, per caput, of each convert to Protestantism. 
It is a well established fact, that the College De Propaganda 
Fide, in Eome, the yearly income of which is just ^85,000, 
annually converts more souls to Christianity than the whole 
machinery of Protestant missionary effort is able to evan- 
gelize. Almost every known language is taught in this 
institution by the first masters of the age, and it sends out 
yearly its bands of missionaries, like those sent out by our 
blessed Lord, without scrip or purse, to preach the gospel, in 
eveiy land where man has a habitation. Money is not 
power ! But the Word of God, preached by the authorized 
ministers of Christ, is power — not because of any intrinsic 
excellence of the teachers themselves, but from the Divine 
aid given to those sent of God, which enables them to pro- 
duce fruits, where the efforts of mere human wisdom, sustained 
by millions of money, can find naught but unfertile fields and 
barren wastes. 

** Knowledge is power ? '* Yes, but the tree of knowledge 
has two stems, one for good and the other for evil. Know- 
ledge with religion is powerful for good ; knowledge without 
religion is as powerful for evil. ** Popery monopolized for 
ages the learning of the world, and seeks to do so still,'' but 
** its hostility to common schools and general intelligence 
has grown into a proverb." Here is a flat contradiction ; 
but I suppose you mean to assert, that the Catholic Church 
reserves for its clergy aU the learning, and is opposed to the 
spread of intelligence among the people. This is an old 
slander, the falsity of which you have had abundant oppor- 
tunities to learn. According to their numbers, the Catholic 
people of Kentucky expend more money for educational 
purposes than does any Protestant sect in the State. They 
own and control a gi'eater number of schools, academies and 
colleges for the education of the youth of both sexes than 



108 LETTEIIS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

any denomination of twice their nmnber. But tlie Catholic 
Church is opposed to the education of the intellect to the 
exclusion of the education of the moral faculties. She wishes 
to have nothing to do with education where these are left to 
run wildly to ruin. There are many Protestants, of known 
virtue and intelligence, who fully agree with Catholics upon 
this point. No Christian, who will reflect on the tendency 
of this sort of education, as exhibited in the fruits of the 
German rationalistic school of the present day, can fail to 
recognize the wisdom of the Catholic Church in preferring 
that her schools be not only schools of intellectual knowledge, 
but also of virtue and religion. 

If you mean by saying ''there is scarcely a principle or 
tenet of Catholicism that does not bear a direct relation to 
the enslavement and degradation of mankind,'' that the 
Catholic Church labors to bring all men under the yoke of 
the gospel of Christ, you are perfectly correct in your estimate 
of her purposes. But there is no ** degradation " in'^^is. If 
you mean that through her principles and tenets she labors to 
degrade manhood from its true dignity, you entirely mistake 
the object of her mission. She seeks to raise up, but never 
to degrade. Your synopsis of the principles and tenets of 
the Church is, without doubt, the most unique affair of the 
kind that has ever come under my notice, and your explana- 
tion of the nature of her sacraments, affects me only with 
wonder at the insufferable stupidity of that mind, whose ideas 
are so much opposed to the plainest dictates of common sense. 
You say, in effect, that the ministry of the Church is the 
vital force of the Catholic system. Will you be kind enough 
to tell me what other force, than the teaching of the ministry, 
is indicated by the writers of the Kew Testament for the 
spread of the Gospel ! You say that the Saciiiice of the 
Mass does away with the " great doctrine of justification 
by faith alone.'* In saying this, are you not treading on the 
toes of some of your non-evangelical Protestant neighbors ? 

You say '*the Kentucky Catholic believes that Jesus 
Christ constituted the Eomish King his special Vicar on 
earth, and therefore gave his perfectly conclusive testimony 
and sanction in favor of a royal form of government." The 
Kentucky Catholic says no such thing. He says that by 
appointment, as provided for by Jesus Christ in the economy 
of his Church, the Pope, as Bishop of Rome, possesses and 
exercises the office of V^icar of Christ upon earth. He cornea 
by his royal prerogatives as other rulers come by theirs, 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 109 

according to tlie genius and constitution of the State over 
which he is placed. His office of Governor of Rome is not 
necessarily connected with his office of Vicar of Jesus Christ. 

The most astonishing portion of your Avhole article, how- 
ever, is that in which Pius IX is charged with having ordered 
the execution of Ugo Bassi. This matter has often been put 
in so clear a light, that there is no excuse for your being igno- 
rant of the facts connected with it. Mr. Cass, our Charge 
at Rome, whose letters were published in the American papers 
two years ago, says that the Austrian Military Governor of 
Bologna was alone responsible for that act, and that neither 
Pius IX, nor his Nuncio, Archbishop Bedini, had anything to 
do with it. Now I ask you, provided Know-Nothingism 
has not deprived you of all candor, to correct at least this one 
of your many aspersions of the Pope. 

You conclude by saying, ** though it is meet that Pius IX 
should be the head of such a system as Roman Catholicism, 
it is not meet that there should be such an unnatural person- 
age as *A Kentucky Catholic' '' You are at perfect liberty 
to think of me and my opinions as you please, and I shall 
not quarrel with you for expressing your thoughts. You and 
I are to be judged by tribunals composed of essentially dif- 
ferent materials. Some of those for whom you write will 
very likely think with you that I am an unnatural personage, 
and you may possibly put your heads together to devise ways 
and means for exterminating all such. Those for whom I 
write, and who disclaim to be governed by the spirit of fana- 
ticism, will be content to allow me and my fellow-religionists 
to believe as we please and worship as we please. They will 
look at our acts in order to discern if there be dangerous sen- 
timents in our hearts. Will your party succeed in ostracising 
American citizens on account of their faith ? — or will the 
true American party succeed in upholding the constitution 
and in rebuking fanaticism ? I will tell you. Besiderium 
peccaiorum peribit, which, freely translated, means, Americans 
shall still rule America, 

Yours, &c., 

A Kentucky Catholic. 

Louisville, December 14th, 1855. 



110 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 



LETTER ELEVENTH. 

Sir : — It is a remarkable circumstance connected with 
this controversy, that you almost invariably state my propo- 
sitions unfairly. For instance : you speak as if I had asserted, 
that the judgment which Almighty God has given to each 
one of us, is not to be used in spiritual matters ; whereas, I 
argued only against the reasonableness of the Protestant 
principle of private interpretation of the scriptures. You 
speak of private judgment in the sense that it is a right. Catho- 
lics have no objection that all men shall hold the right to 
judge for themselves. But we also claim this same right, 
even though our judgment should lead us to the relinquish- 
ment of this '* precious" privilege into the hands of the 
Church of God, so far as the interpretation of the scriptures 
is concerned. If I, through my judgment, am convinced, 
that Jesus Christ instituted a tribunal for the certain inter- 
pretation of His revelation, I am making a veiy poor use of 
my judgment in refusing to acknowledge the intei-pretations 
of such tribunal. In searching for truth, we are bound to 
use our judgment, aided by the Holy Spirit, invoked in 
prayer; and the Catholic Church not only does not oppose 
such use of our reason, but positively enjoins it. If men 
will but use the reason which GoJ has given them, they must 
come to the conclusion, that if there be no other tribunal for 
the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures than that of private 
judgment, then Christ has left liis work in such a state as to 
render it practically impossible for them to arrive, with cer- 
tainty, at *' the knowledge of the truth.'' There is scarcely 
a dogma held by any one of the Protestant denominations, 
that is not denied by some one or another of its sister 
churches. Keason must inevitably lead the logical mind to 
the appreciation of a principle conservative of truth — which 
is one ; but the principle, that each individual Bible reader, 
must pick his faith out of the book, according to his own 
judgment of the meaning of its passages, is a principle that 
inevitably lends to diversiiy — whicli is error. 

If the Apostle Pi}h'v, in riis Epistles, ** addressed himself 
to private ijitoipreiMtiori/' as you say, why does he caution 
the people against so inter[)reting the Epistles of St. Paul, 
his co-laboi-er. He says that many of the writings of St. 
Paul *'arc hind to bo understood," and that *' the unlearned 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. Ill 

and the unstable wrest tlieni, as also the other scriptures, to 
their own destrnction." 

You say that I acknowledge in one sentence what I contra- 
dict in another, and you instance tliis by my acknowledging 
that the Church has no right to force conscience, but that she 
has the right to command moral obedience. Almighty God 
has the right to require obedience to His laws, and yet He 
chooses to leave us free to disobey them. The Church is the 
organ of Christ, and has the right to command my obedience 
to her laws ; yet, as there is no merit in worship that is not 
voluntarily accorded, so the enforcement of the outward 
manifestation of worship is not only useless, but is also 
opposed to the manifest will of God, that his creatures shall 
exercise the attribute of free-will. Your argument is based 
entirely upon the idea, that there is no such thing as free- 
will in man. It is unnecessary to say, that Catholics hold to 
no such doctrine. 

I shall now^ take up your deductions from what you claim 
to be the admissions of *' A Kentucky Catholic,'' and append 
to them, in the order indicated by yourself, such rejoinders 
as their context may require. 

1st. ^' That the Divine law, or the law of conscience, is above all human 
law, and no legislation is binding which contravenes the Divine law or the 
law of conscience." 

This is correctly stated. Do you deny the truth of the 
proposition ? Would you obey any legal enactment which 
commanded you to do that which you believed to be opposed 
to the Law of God ? 

2d. " That this Divine law or law of conscience is binding to any ex- 
tremity — even against personal violence or death itself, and must be 
enforced — no matter what the consequences." 

I am really pained to have to charge you, in this, with 
having given yoiu- readers what appears to me a willful per- 
version of the obvious meaning of the text. In order to 
illustrate XAiid proposition, I gave instances, supposed ones, of 
course, which could not fail to convey to any ordinary mind 
its exact meaning. It is very difficult for me to believe, that 
you misapprehended the idea I endeavored to convey, for the 
words ''and must be enforced," embodied in your deduction, 
and which cannot be, even by the largest license, deduced 
from anything I have ever written, give another and an 
entirely different sense to the proposition. You endeavor to 
make your readers believe, that I hold, that Catholics, in 
order to uphold the law of their conscience, are bound to 



112 LETTERS OF A KENTJCKY CATHOLIC. 

make war upon the State, sliould it ever joass a law contrary 
to tlieir understanding of the Law of Uod; Avhereas, I only 
said, that if the law of the State commanded Catliolics to do 
that which they believed to be opposed to the law of God, it 
would be their duty to refuse obedience to such a law, even 
though death were tlie penalty of their refusal. Allow me to 
give you another illustration, in ortler that you may have a 
clear notion of my meaning. We will suppose that the 
mobocrats who surrounded the burning buildings of Quinn'a 
Row, on the night of the 6th of August last, had been em- 
powered, by previous legislative enactment, to grant an 
amnesty to such of the beleagured inmates as should consent 
to trample on the^law of their conscience, and apostatize 
from their faith ; and further, that according to the same 
enactment, they w^ere commanded to shoot, hang, and burn, 
indiscriminately, all who refused the boon of life except at 
the expense of treason to their God. In such a case, I con- 
tend, that the law of conscience, which is the individual 
conception of what the law of God requires, should have 
induced these persecuted foreigners to accept the penalty 
attached to their contumacy, and to have thus upheld the 
** higher law " of their conscience. 

3d. "That the Pope of- Rome is divinely inspired to make known the 
Divine law, or the law of cou.science, and therefore the law of God can 
always be infalUhlij knuv»'n.** 

I said that the Pope, as Vicar of Jesus Christ, has authority 
to decide for Catholics all questions in the spiritual order, 
and that should the State enact a law of questionable obli- 
gation on conscience, his decision would be, for them, defini- 
tive as to the charactei* of the law. 

4th. "That the law of conscience may be interfered with by human legis- 
lation, and a conflict mxiy at any time occur between spiritual and temporal 
jurisdiction," 

This is so palpably true, that I suppose you will not deny 
it. The civil law, under the Roman Emperors, demanded 
that Christians should offer sacrifices to the gods of heathenism. 
Will you say that these Christians were wrong in refusing 
obedience to the law ? 

5th. "That in case of such conflict, the Pope of Rome is the eupremo 
arbiter of the question, and his decision is final and conclusive. 

6th. "That among the ([uestions he has been called on to decide, is the 
validity of the constitution of the United States." 

I only gave, for your consideration, a quotation from Dr. 
Brownson, wherein he states that "the Pope has already 



LKTT&US OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 113 

decided * that the Constitution of the United States requires 
nothing of the Catholic which is opposed to the law of con- 
science/ " I do not suppose that Dr. Brownson intended to 
assert, by this, that the question of the compatibility of the 
constitution with the Law of God, had actually been brought 
before the Pope for his decision, but only that, inasmuch as 
no Catholic has ever refused to obey the requirements of the 
constitution, the sequence was clear that it does not ask any- 
thing of him contrary to the Divine Law. 

7th. " That no Catholic can plead conscience for violating a law, so it bo 
■passed in accordance with the Cbnstitution.''* 

Laws in reference to temporal matters are of binding force 
until they are repealed, or pronounced unconstitutional by 
the proper tribunals. But no law, of any State, whether 
constitutional or otherwise, which commands either the 
Catholic or Protestant to do that which is in itself opposed 
to the Law of God, or the law of his conscience, is of binding 
force on the mind, and the Christian who should uphold the 
provisions of such a law, would, by the fact, cease to be a 
Christian. 

8th. "That, though the Sovereign Pontiff has pronounced a decision 
favorably to the constitution, he may yet have to decide upon the validity 
of the statutes; and in case he decides that the statutes are unconscientious 
or unconstitutional, the loyalty of every Catholic is that moment released. 

9th. " That the acts of our Congress, or the statutes of the States, are not 
conclusively settled by the supreme courts of the country, and have no bind- 
ing effect unless sanctioned by his Holiness — of dernier resort. 

10th. " That if the supreme courts of the Federal or State Governments 
should decide a statute one way, and his Holiness the other way, the latter 
must prevail, because his Holiness is infallible, and the spiritual order ia 
superior to the temporal order. 

nth. " The higher law doctrine is distinctly avowed and explicitly taught 
in its very worst form. The Foreign Judiciary at Kome is made superior to 
the Domestic Judiciary of the United States." 

Sir, you either grievously misapprehend or willfully misstate 
the whole question. Your premises are false, and your con- 
clusions are necessarily no conclusions at all. You assume 
what you should prove. In merely temporal or civil matters, 
the State is supreme ; and neither the Catholic Church, nor 
its chief executive, the Pope, has any control whatever over 
its enactments or statutes, so long as they remain strictly 
within the civil order. It is only when the State departs from 
its own appropriate sphere of action, and wantonly tramples 
on the rights secured to every Christian alike by the Law of 
God, in the spiritual order, that the Church has an inalienable 
right to step forth, and vindicate her outraged independence. 
Her motto, then, becomes that of the persecuted. Apostles, 



114 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

who, when arraigned before the Jewish tribunals and com- 
manded to cease preaching Christ and His doctrines, answered, 
with a noble courage, ** It is better to obey God than man." 

Your entire reasoning is based upon that fallacy which 
logicians designate ignoratio ehenchi — a misconception of the 
question. If Dr. Brownson means to say, or even to intimate, 
that the binding force of the constitution depends upon the 
Papal sanction — which I cannot, as I have already said, 
believe to have been his meaning — then I differ from him in 
toto on the whole question. There is no evidence to show that 
the Pope has taken any action whatever on the subject. The 
civil authorities are supreme in the temporal order; their 
enactments are of .binding force as long as they do not 
encroach on the rights of conscience, or, what is the same 
thing, trample on the Law of God, with which they have, 
obviously, no right to interfere. You would do well, sir, 
before you proceed further in this controversy, in which you 
have plainly already got far beyond your depth, to take some 
lessons in the elementary principles of a science commonly 
called logic. 

The Pope has nothing to do with civil constitutions, con- 
gressional acts, legal enactments, or courts of civil judicature, 
outside of his own dominions, and his decisions on questions 
of conscience are not given with the purpose of influencing 
these. They are rendered only in order to indicate to the 
children of the Church what is demanded of them by the 
Law of God. All Christianity — Protestant no less than 
Catholic — teaches that human institutions are fallible. It 
follows, therefore, that laws for the government of human 
affairs may be of such a nature as to be opposed to the law 
of conscience, or to that individual understanding of the 
Divine Law, according to which every man must regulate his 
actions. From the very nature of the Being from whom it 
emanates, the Law of God cannot be otherwise than a perfect 
law, and every legal enactment opposed to it, or even to the 
individual perception of the obligations flowing from it, is 
necessarily unjust and iniquitous, and, as such, positively 
requires, at the hands of the conscientious man, that, sooner 
than obey its requirements, he shall consent to suifer whatever 
penalty it may enjoin for contumacy, even though that penalty 
be death itself. The Christian, in refusing to obey such a 
law, does not, as you would seem to indicate when you use 
the words **and must be enforced,'' attempt to control the 
action of the State, and endeavor to enforce the law of his 



LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 115 

conscience against those who may as conscientiously differ 
from him. He acts solely for himself, considering that he 
owes obedience first and above all to the laws of his God. 
If this be the ''higher-law'' doctrine which you speak of, 
then it is the exact doctrine taught by every Christian deno- 
mination in the land, and a doctrine which every Christian, 
who is able to reason logically on the nature of his obligations 
in the moral order, is bound to uphold. 

The Northern Abolitionists may be conscientious in holding 
that slavery is sinful ; but they, not content with using moral 
means for the eradication of the supposed evil, are endeavor- 
ing to enforce the law of their conscience over those who as 
conscientiously believe that the institution is not opposed to 
the Divine Law. It is not requii-ed by our laws that these 
men shall be slaveholders, or even that they shall make use 
of the products of slave labor. In their mode of upholding 
the law of their conscience, they trespass as well on the con- 
sciences of others as upon their civil rights. If they believe 
that the institution of slavery is opposed to the Law of God, 
I blame them not for refusing to have anything to do with it. 
But I do blame them for seeking to measure the consciences 
of their neighbors according to their own standard, and for 
endeavoring to eradicate slavery by trampling on the rights 
of the South. 

The question resolves itself into a nut-shell, and may be 
thus stated: Will not the Christian be held responsible 
before God for rendering obedience to an enactment which he 
conscientiously believes to be opposed to the Divine Law ? 
If he will not be so held, then, the martyrs of all ages, who 
have shed their blood rather than compromise the law of con- 
science, were in fact no martyrs at all, and absolutely, by the 
very act of refusing to obey laws which they deemed repug- 
nant to the Law of God, offered an insult to the Deity, who, 
according to your reasoning, wills that all civil laws, no 
matter whether in accordance with or opposed to the Divine 
Law, shall be implicitly obeyed. 

This discussion, so far as the writer is concerned, closes 
with this letter. I have endeavored, in the course of it, to 
point out to you the injustice of the policy pursued by your 
party towards the Catholic Church and the Catholic people 
of this country. Though a more able controversialist, doubt- 
less, might have presented the subjects I have discussed in a 
clearer light, and with more cogent reasoning ; and though I 
may have failed to effect any change in your views, I can yet 



116 LETTERS OF A KENTUCKY CATHOLIC. 

entertain the liopo that the letters of *' A Kentuclvy Catholic" 
have not been altogether unp]-odiictive of good. I trust that 
they have been instrumental in removing doubts from some 
minds, and in convincing others, that the Roman Catholics 
pf the United States have interests identical with their Pro- 
testant fellow-citizens in the perpetuity of our republican 
institutions. 

Hoping the day will soon come when you, sir, will look 
with regret, if not with repentance, on the part which you 
liave thought proper to take in disseminating the seeds of a 
reckless fanaticism broadcast over the land and trusting in 
Providence to render these seeds unproductive of the bitter 
fruits inseparable fcom their nature, where they are allowed 
to take root, I bid you farewell. 

Yonrs, <kc., 

A Kentucky Catholic, 

Louisville, December 2\sty 1855. 



APPENDIX. 



The following editorial notice appeared in the columns of 
the Louisville Journal ^ in its issue of January 1st, 1856 : 

We see from a notice in the St. Louis Republican tliat the letters, ad- 
dressed to us in one of the Louisville papers under the name of " A Ken- 
tucky Catholic," have been published in book form. No doubt we might 
have learned the fact here if we had inquired. We remember that Mr. 
McGill, the former priest here, after having a written controversy with a 
distinguished Protestant clergyman, was silly enough to issue in book form 
the whole controversy. The Kentucky Catholic is smarter than that — he 
is very careful not to issue the articles of the Louisville Journal side by 
side with his own. He will not let our alkalies go with his acids. There 
are a hundred matters in the publications we have made that he would no 
more dare to put into the hands of his people than he would dare to grant 
them permission to read the Word of God. In fact, if his Church had one 
of their inquisitions here, and he were to republish our expositions of Popery 
even for the vain purpose of refuting them, he would soon find himself upon 
a wheel revolving faster than ever the wheel of fortune did. 

Now, Mr. Prentice is certainly a very talented gentleman, 
and more witty even than he is talented ; but when he takes 
so much credit to himself as to suppose that the Eoman 
Catholic Church would be at all liable to damage, or that the 
faith of her members would be exposed to even the smallest 
danger, from the free circulation among them of his responses 
to the Letters of a Kentucky Catholic, he deceives himself 
most egregiously. It is precisely such men as he that have 
been putting their brains out against the rock upon which 
the Church is built, for more than three hundred years past. 
The editor of the Journal deserves credit for the energy he 
has displayed in a bad cause, and for having in imitation of 
the conduct of the unjust steward, spoken of in the scriptures, 
made ** friends of the mammon of iniquity ; *' but he deserves 
the reprobation of every American citizen for having chosen 



118 



APPENDIX. 



a bad cause wherein to exliibit his great talents and his 
untiring energy. ** A Kentucky Catholic'' cannot pretend 
to cope with Mr. Prentice either in wit, in learning, or in 
felicity of .expression ; but he can cope with all the Know- 
Nothing editors in Christendom, in a love for truth, and in a 
hatred of fanaticism, bigotry, and lying. 

If it were true that Catholics, are afraid of the publication 
of discussions wherein both sides are fairly rendered, how 
does Mr. Prentice account for the fact, that the oral and 
written discussions of Messrs. Hughes and Breckenridge, 
Pope and McGuire,' Campbell and Purcell, &c., are seldom 
to be found in any other than Catholic bookstores, and that 
most of them are published by Catholic booksellers ? Now 
as to the proportionate circulation of such books, — for every 
copy of any published discussion, between a Catholic and a 
Protestant, which Mr. Prentice will find, throughout the 
State of Kentucky, in the possession of a Protestant, I will 
agree to show him three copies of the same work owned by 
Roman Catholics. Does this look like being afraid of the 
influence likely to be created by such works ? There is no 
charge uttered against the members of the Catholic Church 
more utterly false, than that which exhibits them as living in 
constant trepidation lest evangelical light — God save the 
mark ! — should dawn upon them. Catholics, as a class, are 
generally well read in those things w^hich make up the dis- 
tinctive differences between Protestantism and Catholicity — 
much more so than are most Protestants ; and the assumption 
that they are stupidly ignorant, is only the result of the false 
ideas propagated through early education, and that inherent 
spirit of indifferentism, which disinclines so many of our sepa- 
rated brethren to any examination of the points of difference 
between the two religions. 

Mr. McGiLL, **the former priest here,** did issue, in pamphlet 
form, the controversy which took place between himself and 
the Kev. Mr. Craik, of this city ; and there is one circum- 
stance connected with that publication, which, if it proves 
anjrthing, will prove the very reverse of the conclusion sought 



APPENDIX. 119 

to be drawn from it by the editor. I happen to know, tbat 
five-sixths of all the copies that ever were sold of the discus- 
sion named, were sold to Catholics by Catholic booksellers ! 

Again, Mr. Prentice characterizes the conduct of Mr. 
McGiLL, in having issued the book, as " silly,'' and implies 
that, according to Catholic usage, he was liable to severe 
punishment for having shown perfect fairness towards his 
opponent. How, then, does Mr. Prentice account for the 
fact, that instead of being made to revolve on the inquisitorial 
wheel which he speaks of, Mr. McGill "was actually, within 
a short time after the publication of the discussion referred 
to, raised by the Pope to the dignity of a Bishop in the 
Church ? How can the editor establish his theory, in the 
face of these facts ? 

Mr. Prentice says : ** There are a hundred matters in the 
publications we have made that he (A Kentucky Catholic) 
would no more dare to put in the hands of his people than 
he would dare to grant them permission to read the Word of 
God." In this tho^-e are no less than four false assumptions. 
First, the editor assumes that his articles are invincible, and 
that nothing has heretofore appeared so well calculated to 
overwhelm the Catholic Church ;• whereas, in point of fact, 
he has said nothing new, and nothing that has not heretofore 
been better said. Besides, take them altogether, his articles 
are about the weakest affairs that have ever emanated from 
his brain; so much so, indeed, that if his reputation as a 
writer depended on them alone, he would stand very little 
chance of being remembered half a dozen years after his 
death. Secondly, he assumes, that Catholics would be liable 
to ecclesiastical censure for reading or circulating his articles, 
even if accompanied with an exposure of their falsity or 
absurdity ; whereas, it is a well known fact, that Catholic 
publishers are in the habit of issuing unchecked books of 
religious controversy between Catholics and Protestants. 
Thirdly, he assumes, that A Kentucky Catholic is in a posi- 
tion where he may dictate to his brethren as to what they 
shall read and what they shall not read ; whereas, the writer 



120 APPENDIX. 

of the letters to Mr. Prentice has, in reality, no more power 
over their action in the premises than has the editor himself. 
Fourthly, he assumes, that Catholics are not privileged to 
read the Bible at all ; whereas, the reading of the Holy 
Scriptures is not only permitted to them by the Church, but 
is also strongly urged upon them. 

The letters of "A' Kentucky Catholic'' are mostly, made 
up of strictures on certain expressed opinions of the editor of 
the Louisville Journal, and of refutations of certain specific 
charges made by him against the Catholic Church and its 
members. Unless Mr. Prentice has been quoted unfairly by 
the writer — and the editor has brought no such accusation 
against him — there is evidently no necessity for the correct 
understanding and appreciation of the letters, that his responses 
should accompany them in the same book. 

A Kentucky Catholic. 



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